The chief of staff of the German armed forces resigned Thursday over accusations that the military withheld information on a deadly airstrike in Afghanistan in September that killed civilians as well as insurgents. Germany's defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, told parliament that the chief of staff, Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, as well as a senior official in the Defense Ministry, State Secretary Peter Wichert, had tendered their resignations after a German news report that information on civilian casualties had been withheld from the public and from prosecutors. Their departures set off political tremors in Berlin and within the German military, with the opposition Social Democrats calling for a parliamentary inquiry. Other opposition groups demanded the resignation of Franz Josef Jung, the labor minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, who was the defense minister at the time of the attacks. On Sept. 4, Col. Georg Klein, then the commander of the German base in the northern Kunduz region, called in an airstrike against two tanker trucks hijacked by Taliban insurgents. In the aftermath of the attack, Jung repeatedly claimed that only insurgents had been killed in the attack. But, citing a classified internal report, the daily newspaper Bild said Thursday that officials in the Defense Ministry were aware almost from the start of the likelihood of civilian casualties. Within hours of the airstrike, the report said, German military personnel in Afghanistan gave 'clear indications' to the Defense Ministry about civilian casualties, based on reports from a hospital in Kunduz where wounded civilians were being treated. Nor could Klein have ruled out the possibility of civilian casualties when he ordered the strike, the report further stated. Bild also posted aerial video of the attack on its Web site showing people in the form of tiny black dots swarming around the tankers before the explosion. Dozens of civilians are believed to have died in the attack, which killed as many as 142 people. Schneiderhan and Wichert had 'assumed responsibility,' Guttenberg said, for what he called a breakdown in communications. But it was not clear what role, if any, they had played in the military's withholding of information. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social Democrat who until last month was Germany's foreign minister, told reporters in Berlin that while Schneiderhan had taken military responsibility, 'the question here is the political responsibility.' Jung defended his actions before parliament on Thursday evening, saying that he 'informed both the public and the parliament properly according to the best of my knowledge.' Guttenberg, who took over as defense minister last month after elections in September, said that he had learned of the report only after Bild called him on Wednesday for comment. 