KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 24 — Eight civilians, including a child, were killed in an operation by American forces in eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan police official said today. United States forces admitted killing a 12-year-old boy and injuring a woman, but said the 7 men also killed were “Qaeda facilitators” who had opened fire on them as they approached a housing compound.

The Afghan government has sent a team to investigate the circumstances of the killings, said Abdul Sabour Allah Yar, deputy police chief of Kunar, the province where the incident took place. He said the men killed were elders who had gathered in the house to resolve a family dispute. Four other civilians were arrested in the raid, he said.

A spokesman for the coalition forces in Afghanistan, Col. Tom Collins, said the United States forces conducted an early morning operation against a compound housing “suspected terrorists” to capture a “known Al Qaeda facilitator.”

“Seven suspected Al Qaeda facilitators were killed during the operation including, we believe, the lead facilitator. There were two civilian casualties during the operation,” Colonel Collins said.

No American or Afghan soldiers with them were injured in the operation. The wounded woman was immediately evacuated to Asadabad for medical treatment, he added.

“Credible intelligence linked the targeted individual to suspected terrorist activities and attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Kunar Province,” Colonel Collins said at a news briefing in Kabul. He said weapons and ammunition were found in the compound but gave no details on how the people inside the compound were linked to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Yar said he had been informed by the local government district chief that the men killed were civilians and elders of two families. Judging from his own subsequent conversation with American commanders, he said, they had been wrongly informed that the meeting was an Al Qaeda gathering.

He also said that the provincial authorities had not been informed of the operation, something that President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly requested to avoid civilian casualties.

American troops have frequently been misled by Afghan informants, who often supply false information against a family or person they have a feud against. The head of the government’s peace and reconciliation commission, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, has said many of those detained by American troops are victims of such false accusations and urged Afghans not to use American soldiers to settle their scores.

The operation took place this morning in the Shigal district of Kunar, north of the provincial capital, Asadabad, where soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division and the Afghan National Army are based. They frequently clash with insurgents opposed to the government and the presence of foreign troops in the mountainous border province.

Today’s incident follows another last week in Paktika province, when coalition planes bombed two vehicles belonging to the Afghan Border Police, killing 14 members of a border patrol. Colonel Collins insisted the vehicles were driven by militants.

President Karzai ordered an investigation into that incident. “I have repeatedly asked the coalition forces to take maximum caution,” he said in a statement released to the press.

A presidential spokesman said that an investigation was also underway into today’s killings.