U.N. denies team investigated Afghan bombing

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United Nations denied Tuesday that it is investigating the July 1 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that Afghans say killed more than 50 civilians at a wedding party, claiming it has conducted a humanitarian fact-finding mission.

That completed report, the international agency said, has been handed over to U.S. and Afghan government authorities.

"The United Nations was not involved in either an inquiry or an investigation but simply [was] responding to humanitarian needs as it does everywhere in the world in similar situations," the United Nations said in a statement released Tuesday from the U.N. mission in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

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U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan added, "The U.N. team went there to see what had happened and also to check if there was any need for humanitarian assistance and in the process gathered the fact-finding information that the villagers shared with them."

Annan also said the team was "asked to clarify some of the judgments and comments" in the initial report.

An article in the Times of London over the weekend leaked details of the U.N. report, indicating the United Nations found no corroboration American military officials' assertion that U.S. aircraft had been fired on from the ground.

The Times' report also suggested an attempt had been made to remove evidence and that "shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood" had been cleared from the area in Uruzgan province.

A U.N. spokesman said Tuesday that the U.N. team members had no ballistics or military expertise, so the team's preliminary conclusions were rejected.

"Our people weren't qualified to do an investigation," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.

U.S. officials have denied any cover-up.

"The only shrapnel and bullets and blood samples that have been picked up by U.S. forces were those picked up by ... the fact-finding team," said Col. Roger King, a U.S. command spokesman in Afghanistan.

The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan has decided not to release the full U.N. report, citing the joint U.S.-Afghan investigation already under way.

"I hope the work the U.N. has done will help them move forward with the investigations speedily," Annan said.