KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan human rights group said Saturday that at least 78 people were killed in a joint Afghan-U.S. coalition military operation in western Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the violence and said most of the dead were civilians. The U.S. coalition said it believed five civilians were among those killed and that it would investigate the Afghan claims.

Meanwhile, a school principal and police official said Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes Saturday in Azizabad — the village where the U.S.-Afghan operation took place Thursday. But villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the Afghans and wounded up to eight.

An Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission researcher visited Azizabad in Herat province and found 78 people had died, 15 houses were destroyed and others were damaged, the group said.

Ahmad Nader Nadery, the group's commissioner, said one of the group's researchers visited Azizabad on Friday and found that 78 people had been killed and 15 houses were destroyed. Earlier Saturday, Nadery said 88 people had been killed; he later said he had been mistaken.

Nadery said the information was preliminary and the group would publish a final report. He did not provide a breakdown of how many were civilians or militants, and said 20 women were among the dead and that children also were killed.

The Afghan Interior Ministry has said that 76 civilians died, including 50 children under the age of 15. Karzai's office said at least 70 civilians died.

The competing claims by the U.S. coalition and the two Afghan ministries were impossible to verify because of the remote and dangerous location of the battle site.