KABUL - AFGHANISTAN'S top rights body released on Tuesday its findings into the disputed casualty toll from US air strikes this month, saying up to 97 civilians, most of them children, may have been killed.

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said insurgents involved in the May 4-5 fighting in the south-western province of Farah had knowingly put civilians at risk but the military had also reacted with too much force.

This comes after an Afghan government investigation found that 140 civilians died in the strikes against insurgents, making it one of the deadliest such incidents since the US-led invasion in 2001.

A US military investigation has disputed the toll, saying 20-30 civilians may have been killed as well as 60-65 Taliban.

The commission said it had sent three investigators to Bala Buluk district a few days after the fighting and they had interviewed witnesses, community elders and aid workers.

'AIHRC believes that as many as 97 persons may have been killed in the air strikes, the vast majority civilians,' it said in a statement.

'Available records suggest that 21 were women and 65 were children, 31 of whom were girls and 34 boys,' it said.

'Witnesses and other sources reported that the 11 other adult males reported killed in these three compounds were also civilians.'

Locals had told the commission that between 25 and 30 insurgents were also killed but it was not clear if they died in initial fighting or in the air strikes, the rights watchdog said.

President Hamid Karzai demanded a halt in air strikes in Afghanistan after the Bala Buluk killings, saying Afghan civilians should not be harmed in the international war on Islamic extremists being fought here. -- AFP