U.N. won't release report filed on U.S. airstrike

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations handed over a report on the U.S. airstrike that killed a large number of Afghan villagers to Afghan-istan and the United States but will not make it public, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

It will be up to U.S. and Afghan authorities, who are conducting a joint investigation of the July 1 attack in Uruzgan province, to release the U.N. report compiled by humanitarian workers who arrived on the scene hours after the airstrike, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

"I hope the work the U.N. has done will help them move forward with the investigations speedily," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Tuesday.

The United States has been severely criticized by Afghans for launching the July 1 attack -- and other airstrikes -- that have caused large numbers of civilian casualties.

The Times of London reported Monday that an initial draft of the U.N. report on the July 1 incident concluded that American forces may have removed evidence after the attack and violated human rights. U.S. officials denied that allegations.

U.N. officials in Kabul and New York refused to discuss the report's findings, though Eckhard confirmed Tuesday that the initial findings had been leaked.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Afghan-istan, asked for the report's conclusions to be substantiated because they came from humanitarian workers -- not experts in human rights, forensic or military matters, Eckhard said. Brahimi opted to give the revised report just to the United States and Afghanistan.

The U.S. command is conducting an investigation with Afghan authorities of the air strike in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, which Afghan officials say killed 48 civilians and wounded 117.