"The toll of civilians killed in bombing by coalition forces on Tuesday night was much higher than the official figure of 21, and may be as high as 50 or even 80, residents reached by telephone said Thursday. The tally differed from that given by a government administrator of the Sangin region, Ezatullah, who uses only one name. He said he had spent four to five hours in the village of Sarwan Qala on Thursday and said the civilian death toll remained 21. Some Taliban were also killed in the bombing, he said, but he did not specify how many. The United States military has stuck with its original news statement, which said that it had called in the airstrikes on Taliban insurgents after a heavy 16-hour battle and destroyed three militant compounds. But residents of the area, some of whom said they had also visited the village and helped bury the dead, said three houses were destroyed and put the number of dead variously at 56, 60 and 80. On Wednesday, villagers brought the bodies of 21 people, mostly women and children, to the Sangin district center to show them to government officials and NATO troops there. Hajji Mahmud, a shopkeeper who lives near Sarwan Qala, said he was one of those who brought the bodies and said 56 people had been killed, most of them women and children. “Three houses were completely destroyed,” he said in a telephone interview. “One of the houses belonged to Faizullah. The family of seven is dead, the whole family.” “Still now they are digging out bodies from the rubble,” he said. A resident of the bombed village, Abdul Nasir, who was away from the village on Tuesday night, said more than 60 people had been killed and many more wounded."