Afghanistan ? U.S. troops and Afghan police killed three militants in an overnight raid on a compound housing people with al-Qaida links in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said today.

People who were in the compound said the dead were civilians and that none of them had fired on the troops, according to Jahangir Pashtun, a spokesman for the governor’s office of Khost province. These witnesses told Pashtun that the U.S. troops opened fire on the compound.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Gregory Julian said the three people killed, one of them a woman, had been specifically targeted as “known individuals with al-Qaida links.” He said two of them fired directly on the troops and another attempted to fire.