A NATO airstrike on Thursday on a village near the embattled provincial capital of Lashkar Gah killed 25 to 30 civilians, Afghan officials in the area said. While NATO confirmed that an airstrike had taken place in the area, where Taliban fighters have been battling NATO forces, it said that the reports were being investigated and that the command was "unable to confirm any civilian casualties." Reliable information on the airstrike " whether it caused the deaths, as local officials and residents reported, and whether the number of civilian deaths was accurate " was elusive. But any substantial civilian death toll would further inflame an Afghan government and public already uneasy over a recent rise in civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes. American commanders have acknowledged that the war has been going badly in recent months as the Taliban and Al Qaeda have stepped up their campaign of bombings and assassinations. Residents claiming to have witnessed the airstrike said at least 18 bodies, all women and children " including one 6-month-old " were pulled from the rubble and taken to the provincial governor's compound in protest. At nightfall in Kabul, the Afghan capital, the NATO command issued a statement confirming only that an airstrike had taken place in the Nadali District, northwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province in the southwest. The command said it expected to give more details on Friday. The NATO command's concern about airstrikes was heightened after Aug. 22, when an American AC-130 gunship attacked a suspected Taliban compound in the village of Azizabad in the western province of Herat, prompting claims by villagers that more than 90 civilians, the majority of them women and children, were killed. The American military under Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American commander in Afghanistan, initially insisted that only 5 to 7 civilians were killed but then ordered another investigation after new evidence emerged from the United Nations and reporters who visited the scene. A subsequent report by a Pentagon-based general, released last week, concluded that more than 30 civilians died. The Azizabad strike shook the already strained relationship between the Bush administration and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. American officials have criticized the Karzai government for what they say is its incompetence and corruption. Mr. Karzai has struck back with demands that American commanders rein in their airstrikes, saying that civilian casualties have undermined popular support for the war effort. After the Azizabad strike, President Bush called Mr. Karzai to express his regrets. Less than two weeks later, General McKiernan issued a so-called tactical directive aimed at reducing civilian casualties. Local officials and residents of Nadali said Thursday that a bomb had hit three houses in a village in the Loy Bagh District that were sheltering seven families fleeing fighting elsewhere in the district over the past week. Mahboob Khan, the district chief, said in a telephone interview that 18 bodies had been pulled from the rubble, and that as many as 12 other bodies remained buried in the ruins. Mr. Khan said the bombing had caused widespread anger among the villagers. "They're busy burying their family members now," he said. He added, "But tomorrow, they will demand to know why their houses were targeted." Mr. Khan's account, and similar ones given by other local officials, could not be verified because reporters were unable to reach the site of the strike. Mr. Khan's compound in Nadali is said to be the only place in the district that is under the control of the government. Accounts of the recent fighting in the area have said that the Taliban have virtually free run of the area, a situation that if true would mean that Taliban commanders would be in a position to exploit the strike by offering their own version of what occurred. NATO commanders say there have been numerous attacks in which the Taliban have made false allegations of civilian casualties. But in the case of the Nadali strike, there were factors suggesting that the accounts of heavy civilian casualties might be true. One was the swift NATO confirmation that there had been an airstrike in the district. Another was the flurry of accounts by witnesses from Lashkar Gah of bodies that were laid out in front of the governor's compound. The BBC reported that one of its reporters had seen 18 bodies, all women and children, ranging in age from 6 months to 15 years. Accounts gathered over the telephone by a reporter for The New York Times in Kandahar, about 85 miles east of Lashkar Gah, were similar. Muhammed Akram, a shopkeeper in Lashkar Gah, said by telephone that the bodies had been brought into the city in a minibus. "They were badly mangled, and they included men, women and children," he said.  At a news conference in Kabul on Sunday, General McKiernan, just back from a top-level review of war strategy at the Pentagon, said the International Security Assistance Force, the coalition he commands, had adopted the most elaborate measures ever undertaken in war for avoiding civilian deaths. "Never in history has a military coalition taken greater measures to try and avoid civilian casualties than have been taken by ISAF," he said. At the briefing, Lt. Gen. Jonathon Riley, the British officer who is General McKiernan's deputy, staunchly defended the way airstrikes were conducted, saying that the combat aircraft involved " mainly from the United States, Britain, France and Canada " used "precision-guided weapons that are much more precise than machine guns" and other battlefield weapons, and that airstrikes were not ordered without multiple sources of intelligence indicating that the targets were combatants. Officers distributed copies of the directive issued by General McKiernan on Sept. 2. "We will demonstrate proportionality, requisite restraint and the utmost discrimination in the use of firepower," the directive said. "We will only use such munitions against Afghan houses or compounds when there is an imminent threat and when the on-the-scene commander determines there is no other way to protect the force." The coalition's chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette of Canada, said in a telephone interview later that the directive had been accompanied by instructions intended to reduce the use of airstrikes in situations where they might cause civilian casualties. He said the NATO command had sent a "reminder" to commanders that they had the option of a "tactical withdrawal" from an engagement with the Taliban to avoid civilian casualties rather than resorting to airstrikes or other heavy weapons."A commander pinned down by enemy fire from a house where there are civilians has to determine his best course of action " whether it is use his firepower or pull out of the area for a short period until he has better opportunity to engage the enemy without endangering civilians," the general said.