MADRID, September 8, 2008 (AFP) - Air strikes in Afghanistan, which Kabul and the United Nations say killed 90 civilians August 22, were carried out on the basis of misinformed US intelligence, the Spanish radio station Cadena Ser said Monday, citing Spanish military sources.

Operation Enduring Freedom, led by the United States, says the air strikes were made during daylight and were aimed at a group of Taliban fighters who opened fire on their soldiers.

'Nevertheless, Spanish intelligence reports indicate that a mistake was made by the American spies,' the Spanish station reported.

'American agents would have received an incorrect tip-off, an allegation made with a vested interest that came from a rival family to those of the victims, but which American intelligence judged to be correct,' Cadena Ser said.

'According to Spanish military intelligence, the victims were sleeping at the time of the attack, having just marked the funeral of an important local tribal leader, who was killed by a rival clan -- the same clan who supplied the information that led to the American attack,' the station said.

The radio reported that the vast majority of victims came from the same family, that had gathered together in the village to attend the funeral. Cadena Ser says that as many as 60 of the 90 victims were children.

American forces have consistently rejected the number, but said Monday that they would carry out a fresh investigation based on new details that have emerged. If the UN figures are proved accurate, it would be one of the deadliest military blunders by international forces in Afghanistan for seven years.

Mobile-phone footage, recorded by a local villager and obtained by AFP, shows at least 30 corpses, many of them children, lined up in a mosque ahead of their burial.

The coalition said September 2 that an internal investigation had found that between five and seven non-combatants and 30-35 Taliban had died in air strikes on the village of Azizabad.

There are around 750 Spanish soldiers in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAD) that operates alongside American forces.

Spanish forces are mainly deployed in the Herat province where the attack took place.