American officers gave the wrong coordinates to their Pakistani counterparts as they sought clearance for the air strike that killed 24 friendly troops last weekend, admit officials in both countries, British daily reported on Sunday. According to The Sunday Telegraph, US and Pakistani officials have previously offered varying accounts of the event as the two countries try to shift the blame. But yesterday a senior Pakistani military officer told The Sunday Telegraph that a border co-ordination unit established to avoid exactly this sort of tragedy was given incorrect details of a suspected Taliban position. "The strike had begun before we realised the target was a border post," he said. "The Americans say we gave them clearance but they gave us the wrong information." It is understood that American officers have not disputed the Pakistani account of what went wrong. The American pilots had been confident in their targets as they flew out of the night sky, towards a mountain ridge that marked the border with Pakistan, the daily said. The Sunday Telegraph said that Afghan and US commandos hunting Taliban training camps inside the eastern edge of Afghanistan had called in air support as they came under fire from the Pakistani border. The co-ordinates had been checked with a Pakistani officer to ensure there were no friendly troops in the area, the pilots believed, and the Apache attack helicopters and lone AC-130 gunship had been given the go-ahead to unload their deadly payload on the mountainside, but as dawn arrived it became clear that a terrible mistake had been made, it said. Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers lay dead, their border posts were a smoking ruin and a crucial alliance had been poisoned, unleashing a wave of anti-American anger in Pakistan, which has halted co-operation against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, report said.