Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Spc. Ryan Hallock/Dvids/ Handout / EPA

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, pictured here at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California in August 2011, has been charged with 17 counts of murder in the deaths of 17 Afghan villagers.

Here are two versions of what happened the night of March 11, when 17 Afghan villagers were shot to death.

First, the Army version: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, troubled by marriage woes, drunkenly left Camp Belambai, 12 miles from Kandahar, with a pistol and an automatic rifle and killed six people as they slept. Bales then returned to the base and left again for another village, this time killing 11. He acted alone and he admitted to the killings, according to the Army.

Then there is the account that child witnesses provided Yalda Hakim, a journalist for SBS Dateline in Australia. Hakim, who was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to Australia as a child, is the first international journalist to interview the surviving witnesses. She said American investigators tried to prevent her from interviewing the children, saying her questions could traumatize them. She said she appealed to village leaders, who arranged for her to interview the witnesses.

Watch the SBS Dateline video "US alerted over Bales behaviour"

In the video, the children told Hakim that other Americans were present during the rampage, holding flashlights in the yard.

Noorbinak, 8, told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg. 

“One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the video.

A brother of one victim told Hakim that his brother’s children mentioned more than one soldier wearing a headlamp. They also had lights at the end of their guns, he said.

“They don’t know whether there were 15 or 20, however many there were,” he said in the video.

Army officials have repeatedly denied that others were involved in the massacre, emphasizing that Bales acted alone.

Obama: Afghan shooting rampage was work of lone gunman 

Bales, who was flown to a maximum-security military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was charged last week with 17 counts of murder and six attempts of attempted murder.

Staff Sgt. Bales charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan massacre 

The massacre came several days after a roadside bomb attack that cost one soldier his leg. Village residents told reporters and Afghan government officials that after the roadside bomb attack, U.S. troops lined up men from the village against a wall and told them they would pay a price. The Pentagon has denied those allegations.  

Pentagon: No evidence that Afghan massacre was a retaliation

Gen. Karimi, assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the murders, told Hakim that he, too, wonders whether Bales acted alone and how he could left the base without notice.

“Village elders said several soldiers took part and that there is boot prints in the area,” Karimi told Hakim. He said villagers told him that they saw three or four individuals kneeling and that helicopters were overhead during the rampage.

“To search for him?” Karimi said he asked them.

“No,” he said they told him. “They were there from the very beginning.”

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FORWARD OPERATING BASE MASUM GHAR, Afghanistan -- In a natural amphitheatre high among the jagged grey peaks of Afghanistan's Panjwai district, the shock of a village shooting rampage is still settling over U.S. soldiers who served with accused gunman Robert Bales.

The soldiers of Tacoma-based 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team were moving into areas inherited from Alaska-based troops, tracking their armored vehicles to memorize the mazy roads of southern province Kandahar, when more than a dozen people were shot dead in Belandai and Zangabad villages.

Bales' brothers in arms are perplexed and distraught by the March 11 slaughter, which has dragged U.S.-Afghan relations to new nadir, prompting President Hamid Karzai to demand a pullback of NATO forces from Afghan communities.

"We are all talking about Sergeant Bales. I talk with some of the soldiers who served with him and they are all surprised. It saddens the friends of his, because my understanding is it was totally out of character," 3/2 Brigade Chaplain Major Edward Choi told Reuters at the unit's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Masum Ghar.

Afghan massacre suspect's wife: 'He did not do this'

The U.S. military last week lodged 17 charges of premeditated murder against Bales, a four-tour veteran, ahead of what is expected to be a long trial. In theory at least, the death penalty is on the table.

Popular leader
Bales had been a popular leader, Choi said, making the massacre even more bewildering. Comrades reject reports his marriage had been in trouble ahead of an Afghan deployment he was reluctant to undertake.

"That is not the case," said Choi, shrugging in frustration. "People that knew him, that dealt with him personally, said he was a great NCO (non-commissioned officer), cared for soldiers, was tactically and operationally professional, loved his wife and kids."

Choi, whose small plywood chapel overlooks a wide river plain and brigade command fenced by concrete blast walls, said some of Bales' comrades had been stressed by moving into a dangerous area that birthed the Taliban, and where its one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammad Omar still has a home.

Three-hour firefight: Afghan militants attack NATO convoy

Choi said he had no doubt multiple deployments were taking a toll on some of the fighting men. New rules governing elite units like the one Bales was assigned to guard, and wandered from in darkness on the night of the killings, were likely.

"When I speak to some of my leaders, our concern is lack of oversight. There are conventional soldiers attached to special forces who are well trained, off on their own, very mature and growing beards and doing their own thing," he said.

"When you take a 19 or 20-year-old conventional soldier and put him into special operations, they might not be able to handle it."

Captain Janel Schlaudecker, a combat stress counsellor for U.S. soldiers in Panjwai, including Bales' unit, said while there was no explanation for what led to the massacres, she had not noticed an impact on the wider stress levels of Bales' brigade, even among the far-flung infantry units.

"It's so hard to judge how they would respond to this. But they are used to going out there and eating next to nothing, if anything," Schlaudecker said.

"They are used to being under a lot more pressure and not having a lot of sleep. They are wired completely differently. They are lot more resilient."

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

Tensions over the incident are still high in Panjwai, an insurgent hotbed west of Kandahar city, and the scene of some of the war's fiercest battles. Scores of Canadian soldiers were killed there before the Americans took over in mid-2011.

U.S. authorities have given the victims' families cash compensation of around $50,000 for each person killed, but at a meeting with district elders this week, U.S. officers and advisers were confronted by angry Afghans demanding to know why more was not done to prevent such an atrocity.

"Local people are very angry. I get hundreds of calls from people who want this soldier tried here, in Afghanistan," said Panjwai radio journalist Abdul Karim, who also runs a curio shop from a shipping container, used by U.S. troops.

Fighting season
Some soldiers worry the massacre will undo hard-won gains over the past year, when insurgent attacks fell 40 percent, and turn sentiment against incoming units of Bales' 3/2 Strykers ahead of the summer fighting months.

The 2012 fighting season is the last which will be fought by NATO in surge-level numbers, as the end-2014 deadline for the exit of most foreign combat troops approaches.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Insurgents have already carried out small attacks as a bitter winter recedes, but U.S. commanders say this does not mean an emboldened Taliban have brought hostilities forward.

"I think the coming summer will be bad and the new guys are worried," said Staff Sergeant Robert Nelson, 37, a garrulous ex-Marine from Texas who runs the 'Mission One' base shop at Masum Ghar for the outgoing 1/25 Arctic Wolves, now packing to leave.

Colonel Todd Wood, the outgoing U.S. commander for the 25th Infantry Division, said patrols were brushing lightly over Belandai and Zangabad to avoid provoking more anger, but he did not think the massacre would make the fighting months worse.

"Right now it's probably still too early to tell," said Wood, a weathered, hyperactive Iraq veteran from Iowa.

"We've still got villagers that will point out IEDs (improvised explosive devices), we've still got villagers out there that will warn us of a possible attack ... that hasn't changed," he said.

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Updated at 7:51 a.m. ET: Karilyn Bales says that she finds accusations that her husband killed 17 Afghan villagers "unbelievable."

The wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales defended her husband in an exclusive interview with Matt Lauer for TODAY, which aired Monday morning.

"I just don't think he was involved," she said. When asked by Lauer if it was a case of mistaken identity, she said: "I don't have enough information."

She later added that "nothing" would be able to change her mind that "this is not what it appears to be."

Read more on this story at TODAY.com

The Washington state woman said her husband joined the Army after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to "protect his family, friends and country. He wanted to do his part." She added that her husband is "very brave, very courageous."

Officials allege that Bales wandered off base in southern Afghanistan earlier this month and killed eight Afghan adults and nine children.

US official: Afghans paid about $50,000 per shooting spree death

'He's like a big kid himself'
According to Lauer, Bales' wife said the soldier had been very involved in raising the couple's two children.

"He is accused of killing nine children, innocent children," Lauer said to Bales' wife.

She responded that the accusations are "unbelievable to me."

"He loves children, he's like a big kid himself," the wife of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier said. "I have no idea what happened, but he would not ... he loves children, and he would not do that."

Bales was formally charged Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other crimes.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

U.S. investigators have said they believe Bales killed in two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again. He is reported to have surrendered without a struggle.

The 38-year-old married father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., is being held at a U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

'A bit confused'
Karilyn Bales has spoken to her husband by telephone twice since he was detained. The soldier called his wife first from overseas shortly after massacre, and then last week from Fort Leavenworth where the two talked about family matters and "reaffirmed their love for each other," said her attorney, Lance Rosen.

She said that Bales "seemed a bit confused" during the phone calls.

Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17

The couple has two young children, a girl named Quincy and a boy named Bobby.

Fourth tour of duty
Bales was on his fourth tour of duty in a war zone, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered a head injury and a foot injury. His civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, had said the soldier and his family had thought he was done fighting.

Speaking to Lauer, Karilyn Bales added: "He shielded me from a lot of what he went through. He's a very tough guy."

The family has set up a defense fund to help pay for Bales' legal fees.

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

The Bales family had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion a year ago. Karilyn Bales put the family's Lake Tapps, Wash., home up for sale days before the rampage.

The youngest of five brothers, Bales grew up in the working class Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, Ohio, and has been described as cheerful, all around good guy. He joined the Army two months after 9/11, after a Florida investment business failed and after he had worked with a string of securities operations.

The Associated Press, NBC News and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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AP,file

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left, 1st platoon sergeant, Blackhorse Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division participates in an August 2011 exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged Friday with 17 counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder, along with other charges, in connection with a shooting rampage in two southern Afghanistan villages that shocked Americans back home and further roiled U.S.-Afghan relations.

The charges come almost two weeks after the massacre in which Bales allegedly left his base in the early morning hours and shot Afghan civilians, including women and nine children, while they slept in their beds, then burned some of the bodies.

Military wives rally around Karilyn Bales

It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.

 Bales was read the charges on Friday at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week, a U.S. official said.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday without commenting on the specific charges that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that at some stage in the prosecution his client's mental state will be an important issue.

Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17

Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, says Bales was also charged Friday with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault.

The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings. A military legal official for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, noted that premeditated murder is not something that has to have been contemplated for a long time.

“These are unsurprising charges, predictable charges. I would have thought there would have been a few more lesser charges because no prosecutor likes to lose his principal charge and see the individual walk so usually some lesser offenses are charged as well,” Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, told msnbc.com.

“But what will really be significant is when the charges are referred to trial by the convening authority … because when they are referred, they will either be referred as capital or not. … If referred capital, that will change the complexion of the case.”

A senior U.S. official tells NBC News that Bales is likely to face lesser charges such as dereliction of duty and disobeying a lawful order.

The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, whose home is in Bonney Lake, Wash., faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it could be months before any public hearing.

Legal jurisdiction in the Bales case is expected to be switched Friday from U.S. Forces-Afghanistan in Kabul to Bales' home base of Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., U.S. officials said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said Bales could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder, but it is unlikely. The U.S. military has not executed a service member since 1961. Legal experts say Bales could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.

The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, dishonorable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances, Kolb said. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.

How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

Legal experts have said the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military hasn't executed a service member since 1961 when an Army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria. None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians.

“This is just the first step in what’s going to be a very long process and it still remains to be seen whether this is actually going to be a death penalty case or not,” Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, told msnbc.com. “The basic idea here is that you can’t hold somebody in jail forever without charging them, so they’ve had to take this first step here.”

The charging document did not provide details about the killings, leaving the timeline unclear. The dead bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base.

Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.

It also is not known whether the suspect used grenades, Kolb said. The grenade launcher attachment is added to the standard issue M-4 rifle for some soldiers but not all, he said. Bales was assigned to provide force protection at the base.

Msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 8:26 a.m. ET: WASHINGTON -- Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 16 counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the March 11 massacre in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. defense official told NBC News on Thursday.

The charges are expected to be released Friday.

On Thursday, defense officials changed their official death count in the incident to 17 from 16. Bales is accused of leaving his base in Panjwei, entering a village and killing the civilians in their homes.

Bales is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Related story: How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

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Two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed Thursday that 17 Afghan civilians were killed in the shooting in Panjwei on March 11.

Thursday morning, Gen. John Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that 16 civilians were killed, but now defense officials put the number at 17.

Why the discrepancy?

How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

One senior U.S. defense official said one of the injured has died in the past few days, but the other senior U.S. defense official believed the U.S. military has evidence there was a 17th body at the scene.

Either way, the death toll is now at 17.

One of the senior defense officials said that at least one of the injured remains in very serious condition.

The village killings sparked violent protests in Afghanistan, endangered relations between the two countries and threatened to upend American policy over the decade-old war. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the case.

Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Residents of an Afghan village near where an American soldier is alleged to have killed 16 civilians are convinced that the slayings were in retaliation for a roadside bomb attack on U.S. forces in the same area a few days earlier.

In accounts to The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials, the residents allege that U.S. troops lined up men from the village of Mokhoyan against a wall after the bombing on either March 7 or 8, and told them they would pay a price for the attack.

The lawyer for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused in the March 11 killings of the 16 civilians, has said that his client was upset because a buddy had lost a leg in an explosion on March 9.

It's unclear if the bombing cited by attorney John Henry Browne was the same as the one described by the villagers that prompted the alleged threats. After a meeting at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Browne said Bales told him a roadside bomb blew off the leg of one of his friends two days before the shootings occurred.

Inquiry targets 'command climate' in Afghan killingsA spokesman for the U.S. military declined to give any information on the bombing or even confirm that it occurred, citing the investigation of the shootings. He also declined to comment on the allegation that U.S. troops threatened retaliation.

"The shooting incident as well as any possibilities that led up to it or might be associated with it will be investigated," Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Tuesday.

Bales, 38, is suspected of leaving a U.S. base in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, entering homes and gunning down nine children, four men and three women before dawn on March 11 in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai. Mokhoyan is about 500 yards (meters) east of the base.

The shootings have further strained ties between the U.S. government and President Hamid Karzai who has accused the U.S. military of not cooperating with a delegation he appointed to investigate the killings.

Karzai's investigative team is not convinced that one soldier could have single-handedly left his base, walked to the two villages, and carried out the killings and set fire to some of the victims' bodies. The U.S. military has said that even though its investigation is continuing, everything currently points to one shooter.

The U.S. military does not release information on incidents such as roadside bombings if no coalition troops are killed so it has been impossible to independently confirm the eyewitness accounts.

Ghulam Rasool, a tribal elder from Panjwai district, gave an account of the bombing at a March 16 meeting in Kabul with Karzai in the wake of the shootings.

"After the incident, they took the wreckage of their destroyed tank and their wounded people from the area," Rasool said. "After that, they came back to the village nearby the explosion site.

"The soldiers called all the people to come out of their houses and from the mosque," he said.

"The Americans told the villagers 'A bomb exploded on our vehicle. ... We will get revenge for this incident by killing at least 20 of your people,'" Rasool said. "These are the reasons why we say they took their revenge by killing women and children in the villages."

Naek Mohammad, who lives in Mokhoyan, told the AP that he was inside his home when he heard an explosion on March 8.

"At first I thought it was an airstrike," Mohammad said. "After some time I came out and talked with my neighbor. He told me that there was an explosion on NATO forces."

Mohammad said that as the two discussed the incident, two Afghan soldiers approached them and ordered them to join other men from the village who had been told to stand against a wall.

"One of the villagers asked what was happening," he said. "The Afghan army soldier told him 'Shut up and stand there.'"

Mohammad said a U.S. soldier, speaking through a translator, then said: "I know you are all involved and you support the insurgents. So now, you will pay for it — you and your children will pay for this.'"

Mohammad's neighbor, Bakht Mohammad, and Ahmad Shah Khan, also of Mokhoyan, gave similar accounts.

The U.S. soldiers arrived in the village with their Afghan army counterparts and made many of the male villagers stand against a wall, Khan said.

"It looked like they were going to shoot us, and I was very afraid," said Khan. "Then a NATO soldier said through his translator that even our children will pay for this. Now they have done it and taken their revenge."

Several Afghan officials, including Kandahar lawmaker Abdul Rahim Ayubi, said people in the two villages that were attacked told them the same story.

Mohammad Sarwar Usmani, one of several lawmakers who went to the area to investigate the shootings, said that after hearing accounts by villagers, he believed their assertions that the slayings were carried out by more than one gunman and that they were in retaliation for the bombing.

Usmani also said that the Afghan National Army had confirmed to him that an explosion occurred near Mokhoyan on March 8.

Abdul Salam, an Afghan soldier, showed an AP reporter in Panjwai district on March 13 the site of the blast, which made a large crater in the road. The soldier said the explosion occurred three days before the shootings. Salam said he helped gather the men in the village, but that he was not close enough to hear what the troops said to them.

The identity of the soldier who allegedly threatened the villagers is not known.

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The top U.S. commander for Afghanistan told lawmakers on Tuesday that an investigation is under way into the command climate surrounding the sergeant accused in the shooting massacre of 16 Afghan civilians. This is separate from the criminal investigation into the killings, allegedly committed by Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.

Gen. John Allen, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, revealed the investigation will look into the command and control process, how and why Bales was assigned to the Special Operations Village stability mission and what the combat relationships were within that unit. 

It's expected the investigation will also look into the presence of alcohol on that small outpost in southern Afghanistan and whether there was a breakdown in command leadership in that unit.

Because of the criminal investigation under way, Allen offered no additional information on the suspect, other than to repeat that the U.S. military is committed to seeking justice in the case.

Bales' lawyer questions evidence in Afghan killings

Bales, 38, of Lake Tapps, Wash., has not been charged yet in the March 11 shooting spree. He was deployed to Afghanistan in December.

U.S. military officials said they still expect him to be charged later this week. The charges will be released by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, they said.

NBC News Pentagon Producer Courtney Kube contributed to this report.

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