The incongruous stories surrounding the March 11 massacre on Afghan civilians in two villages took another turn today, with reports from witnesses in Mokhoyan, one of the two villages targeted, that they were threatened by US troops just days before the massacre.

The witnesses say that troops rounded up all the men from the villages after a roadside bombing, lined them up against a wall, and told them they would “pay a price” for the attack.

The witnesses put the date of the bombing at either March 7 or 8. Previous stories had massacre suspect Robert Bales supposedly “upset” about a bombing in which one of his friends lost a leg.

The military would neither confirm or deny any bombings in the area, only insisting that they would investigate anything that might be related to the shootings. They likewise gave no comments about the threats in Mokhoyan.

If confirmed, the threats would also appear to support the Afghan probe’s version of the massacre, which had an organized group of over a dozen US troops carrying out the massacre, as opposed to a lone man, as the US maintains.