Pakistan's military on Friday rejected the findings of a Pentagon probe that concluded both Pakistan and the United States shared blame for an American-led coalition attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border, severely straining relations between the two countries.

In a brief response to the Pentagon report, the Pakistani military called it "short on facts" and questioned its conclusions. Infuriated by the attack, Pakistan shut down border crossings used by convoys delivering supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan, and ordered the United States to vacate an air base in southern Pakistan that in the past has been suspected as a launch pad for CIA drone attacks.

The American report, released Thursday, found that errors made by U.S. forces played a role in the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. Mistakes included the use of incorrect mapping information that led to confusion about the actual location of Pakistani troops in the area where the firefight occurred.

But the investigation also determined that the incident was triggered by Pakistani soldiers who began firing at U.S. special operations troops carrying out a mission on the Afghan side of the border - an assertion that Pakistan strongly denies.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark, who led the investigation, said the 120-member U.S. contingent was making its way up rugged terrain toward the village of Nawa when it was hit by heavy machine gun fire and mortar shelling from a ridgeline on the Pakistani side of the border. The two makeshift border posts where the 24 Pakistani soldiers were stationed were located on that ridgeline.

When the team's commander called his headquarters to check if any Pakistani soldiers were in the area, he was mistakenly told that there were none. The commander then ordered an AC-130 gunship to fire at the ridgeline. Firing from the ridgeline toward the U.S. ground troops continued, prompting the AC-130 gunship as well as two Apache helicopters to fire back, Clark said.

Source: Los Angeles Times