US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in

the

bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with

alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan

investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother

were shot

on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in

Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise

composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as NATO admitted responsibility for all the deaths

for

the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had

been

dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

"Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were

accidentally

killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men," said

Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a NATO spokesman. The coalition

continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal

investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate

conduct.

The Kabul headquarters of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of

US and

Nato forces, claimed originally that the women had been "tied up, gagged

and

killed".

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The

Times: "I think the special forces lied to McChrystal."

"Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area?" the

official

said. "They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out

the

bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes."

The official, who asked not to be named until the results of the

investigation

have been made public, said that the assault force sealed off the

compound

from 4am, when the raid started, to 11am, when Afghan officials from

Gardez

were finally allowed access to the house.

At least 11 bullets were fired during the raid, the investigator said,

and the

shooting was carried out by two American gunmen positioned on the roof

of

the compound. Only seven bullets were recovered from the scene.

"I asked McChrystal, ‘why did the Americans clean some of the bullets

from the

area?' They don't have the right to do that," the official said.

Haji Sharabuddin, the head of the family who were attacked, told The

Times

last month that troops removed bullets from his relatives' bodies, but

his

claims were impossible to verify. The hallway where four of the five

victims

were killed had been repainted and at least two bullet holes had been

plastered over.

Video footage of the raid's aftermath, collected by Afghan

investigators,

shows close-up shots of one man's bloodstained and punctured torso and

walls

with blood on them. The Afghan official's conclusion that the bullets

were

removed is based on the testimony of survivors, analysis of the

photographs

and the missing bullets.

NATO promised a joint forensic investigation in a statement issued after

the

raid, but Rear Admiral Greg Smith, the coalition's director of

communications in Afghanistan, said that this had proved impossible

because

the bodies were buried the same day in accordance with Islamic custom.

Instead Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior sent its top criminal

investigator

from Kabul, and a Canadian brigadier-general led a separate military

inquiry.

The Afghan investigation differed in one respect from The Times'

findings. Survivors told this newspaper that Saranwal Zahir, the police

officer's brother, was shot when he tried to shout that his family was

innocent. The women, who were crouching behind him, were killed in the

same

volley of fire. Afghan investigators believe that Mr Zahir was carrying

an

AK47 and wanted to avenge his brother's killers. The women were

clustered

around him, trying to pull him inside the house, when the second US

gunman

opened fire, killing all four of them.

Footage collected by the Afghan team also shows a man in United States

Army

uniform taking pictures of the bodies. The findings have not been made

public. The Interior Ministry is expected to pass a report to the

Attorney-General's office, which will decide whether or not it can press

criminal charges.

The family had more than 25 guests on the night of the attack, as well

as

three musicians, to celebrate the naming of a newborn child.

"In what culture in the world do you invite ... people for a party and

meanwhile kill three women?" asked the senior official. "The dead bodies

were just eight meters from where they were preparing the food. The

Americans, they told us the women were dead for 14 hours."

In a statement yesterday, Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a NATO

spokesman,

said: "We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept

responsibility

for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever

by

the families.

"The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search

of a Taliban insurgent, and believed that the two men posed a threat to their

personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying

to

protect their families."