WASHINGTON, Nov 1: Pakistan’s government must allow an independent investigation into the aerial bombing of a religious school in the Bajaur area, a US-based rights group said on Wednesday.

The Human Rights Watch noted that the October 30 attack in the town of Khar killed 82 people, including several children, though a military spokesman claimed the dead were all militants and denied any “collateral damage.”

The demand came hours after Pakistani troops sealed off the troubled frontier zone amid a third day of tensions over the deadly air raid. Hundreds of soldiers threw a tight cordon around Bajaur a day after 15,000 tribesmen protested against the Pakistani and US governments and vowed to take revenge.

“Given the repeated assertions that most of those killed in Khar were civilians and not combatants or militants, the government of Pakistan must justify the legality of the attack,” the HRW said.

“If it was a law enforcement operation, the scale of the deaths point to use of excessive force in the extreme, with no or little effort to minimize loss of life. If it was a full-scale military operation, it raises real concerns about the proportionality of the attack and whether the attack was indiscriminate.”

“The Pakistani government should allow independent investigators into the area to determine who carried out the attack, how it was planned and executed, and who was killed,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for the HRW.

“The onus is on the Pakistani government to provide a credible account of the legitimacy of the attack resulting in the deaths of so many.