Five adults and four children from the same family were killed when US-led coalition forces bombed their mud brick home during a battle with militants in Afghanistan, it has been claimed.

The casualties apparently occurred during a retaliatory coalition strike late last night following a Taleban attack on a US base in the Kapisa province, Sayed Daud Hashimi, the province's deputy governor, told AFP news agency.

Four generations of the same family are said to have been killed in the attack.

An intelligence official in Kabul, which is 50 miles south of Kapisa, told AFP that the civilians killed were relatives of a Taleban militant being sought by coalition troops.

He had allegedly triggered the strike by launching a rocket at the base of the Western military provincial reconstruction team from his home nearby shortly beforehand, the official added.

It is not known whether the wanted militant also died in the attack. “It seems that the casualties were relatives of that Taleban,” the official said.

Zemari Bashary, an Interior ministry spokesman, said the Afghan Government had sent a delegation to investigate the incident in Kapisa’s Nijrab district.

The US-led coalition confirmed last night's attack, but said it did not have information on whether any civilians had died. The coalition says it is looking into the incident.

Dean Welsh, a spokesman for the 11,000-strong force, said: “I can confirm an airstrike was conducted in Kapisa province but we don’t have any information on casualties."

Gulam Nabi, 51, later told the Associated Press that among those killed were his parents, his sister, his nephew, and four of the extended family’s youngest children.

News of the airstrike will pile further pressure on the US-led force as it came on the same day that witnesses said American Marines fired on civilian cars and pedestrians, killing up to 10, in a frenzied escape from a suicide bomb and gunfire attack in eastern Afghanistan.

The alleged shootings were "strongly condemned" by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President, who has repeatedly called on US-led and Nato soldiers to avoid civilian deaths.

- Two British soldiers killed in a rocket attack in Helmand province on Saturday were named today as Lance Bombardier Ross Clark, 25, and Lance Bombardier Liam McLaughlin, 21, both of 20 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery.

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