The German government has been accused of "constantly lying" to cover up its support for the US occupation of Afghanistan.
The charge was made on the opening day of the Berlin inquiry into the massacre of 142 Afghans on September 4.
Its remit is to investigate allegations that Chancellor Angela Merkel's government withheld information and covered up the scale of civilian casualties.
These occurred after US warplanes bombed two petrol tankers near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
The tankers, loaded with fuel to supply NATO tanks, were hijacked by Taliban insurgents and were bogged down in mud near a small hamlet.
Villagers gathered to help siphon off the petrol, following which German commander Colonel Georg Klein called up a US airstrike.
Defence Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg has defended the action as a "militarily appropriate" decision and "the most important event in the military history of post-war Germany."
In an attempted cover-up, government officials initially denied that any civilians were killed in the bombings.
But after the Taliban insisted that at least 24 children were among the dead, even a German military police report confirmed that local villagers had been killed.
After Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticised the German commanders for calling up an airstrike instead of sending in ground troops to recover the tankers, German opposition parties began to organise the inquiry that opened yesterday.
Left party spokeswoman Christine Buchholz slated the decision to drop bombs from the air as "unconscionable."
"The government has been constantly lying on the war in Afghanistan and the Kunduz strike," Ms Buchholz declared.
"First of all they denied that civilians were killed and, secondly, we now know the target was to hit the Taliban fighters. which goes absolutely against the German troops' mandate for being in Afghanistan, which is supposed to be one of humanitarian assistance."
Ms Buchholz called for Mr Guttenburg to resign and stressed that "the solution must be to bring back the troops immediately from Afghanistan - this must be the consequence of the Kunduz bombing."
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/84607
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