German Labour Minister Franz Josef Jung resigned on Friday amid the fallout from September's deadly air strike in Afghanistan. (Gero Breloer/Associated Press)

Germany's labour minister resigned Friday after conceding that a military report on a deadly September air strike in northern Afghanistan failed to reach him while he held the government's defence portfolio.

Labour Minister Franz Josef Jung made the announcement a day after the head of Germany's armed forces, Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and deputy defence minister Peter Wichert also stepped down.

Jung said he was taking responsibility for the fact that the German military report on the Sept. 4 air strike didn't reach him, despite his being defence minister at the time.

"I am taking responsibility for the Defence Ministry's internal information policy toward the minister regarding the events of Sept. 4 in Kunduz," Jung said in a brief statement.

For days after the strike, Jung said there was no evidence of civilian casualties, but the newspaper Bild reported Thursday that the military report — drawn up in the days after the attack — suggested civilians had died.

The newspaper did not say how it had learned of the contents of the confidential report.

An Afghan commission has said 30 civilians were killed along with 69 armed Taliban fighters in the NATO air strike, which was called in by a German colonel who feared the Taliban might use two tanker trucks they had seized to attack troops.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday "there must be full transparency" over the incident.

Jung, a member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, did little to satisfy critics when he defended himself in parliament late Thursday.

He said Schneiderhan had asked him in October for clearance to send the report to NATO, and he agreed. But Jung himself did not see the report, and said he had no "concrete knowledge" of its contents.

He insisted Friday that "I correctly informed both the public and parliament about what I knew." Jung moved to the Labour Ministry last month as Merkel embarked on her second term.

The new defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said he had seen the material only on Wednesday, and may need to reassess the air strike.

"I will make a new evaluation of the incident in Kunduz, because we could of course get a different picture now from the reports," Guttenberg told reporters after appearing before parliament's defence committee.

Earlier this month, Guttenberg said a separate, classified NATO report concluded there were "procedural errors" in the air strike, but said the colonel's decision to request it was "appropriate in military terms."

He said he assumed there were civilian victims based on his assessment of the report prepared by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Germany has more than 4,000 troops in northern Afghanistan, and 36 have been killed.

There was no immediate word on Jung's successor.