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KARACHI, Pakistan (MCT) — Tension between Pakistan and the United States rose Sunday over a U.S. airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, as the two sides offered widely disparate accounts of what might have happened.

NATO officials said Afghan and U.S. troops operating inside Afghanistan early Saturday had been fired on from the Pakistani side of the border and had requested close air support to help defend themselves. What happened next is still under investigation, officials said.

But Pakistan’s chief military spokesman said he did not believe that there had been any fire directed at the Americans from Pakistan and said he did not believe the attack could have been inadvertent.

Major Gen. Athar Abbas said the military outpost on a mountain top at Salala in the Mohmand part of Pakistan near the Afghan border was well marked on maps that both Pakistan and NATO have and that the U.S. air assault lasted for more than an hour.

“I cannot rule out the possibility that this was a deliberate attack by ISAF,” Abbas said, referring to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force by its acronym. “If ISAF was receiving fire, then they must tell us what their losses were.”

No NATO casualties have been acknowledged in Saturday’s clash. A military official in Washington identified the NATO forces involved as American.

The Saturday incident was the worst to date for the two supposed allies along the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border, and sent U.S.-Pakistani relations to their lowest point since the May raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout, when U.S. troops entered Pakistan without notifying Pakistani officials and killed the al-Qaida leader in the Pakistani city of Abbottabod.

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