 There were a lot of people killed and a lot of vehicles damaged or destroyed  |
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US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
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Both accounts speak of heavy casualties.
The Pentagon says AC-130 gunships and fighter jets launched from US aircraft carriers attacked the convoy near the town of Khost, south-west of Tora Bora, the former al-Qaeda stronghold.
A command and control compound from which the convoy of 10 to 12 vehicles had departed was also said to have been hit.
"There were a lot of people killed and a lot of vehicles damaged or destroyed," US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference in Washington.
A Pentagon spokesman said intelligence reports had indicated that the convoy contained "leadership" but did not specify whether they were Taleban or al-Qaeda leaders.
Conflicting casualty reports
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), which is generally sympathetic to the Taleban, reported that 65 people were killed in the attack.
Many others were injured when the warplanes attacked, it said.
Several Afghan elders, tribal chiefs and commanders were among the victims of the killings," Sayed Yaqeen, an official of the Paktia tribal council, was quoted as saying.
Fourteen vehicles in the convoy were totally destroyed and, according to one source quoted in the report, the victims included a militia commander, Mohammadi Ibrahim, brother of the Afghan commander Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani.
A member of the local government, or shura, in the region told the BBC that 15 people had been killed in the bombing.
It is also being reported that more than 20 civilians were killed when US aircraft bombed the village of Sarkando in the same province.
A number of others were reportedly wounded in the attack in which the village was said to have been destroyed.