Handout / Reuters

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is seen during an exercise at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, in this Aug. 23, 2011, handout photo.

TACOMA, Washington - An Afghan villager and two of his sons, who survived a night-time shooting rampage in March, testified on Saturday that they saw only one U.S. soldier attacking their compound, backing the U.S. government's account.

A teenager said he had cried out "We are children, we are children" during the attack, but then saw the soldier shoot a child.

Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, accusing him of killing 16 villagers, mostly women and children, when he ventured out of his remote camp on two revenge-fueled forays over a five-hour period in March.

The shootings in Afghanistan's Kandahar province marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on an individual U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and damaged already strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

The U.S. government says a coherent and lucid Bales acted alone and with "chilling premeditation."

Some villagers told reporters shortly after the attacks that more than one U.S. soldier was involved, but sworn statements to that effect have not been made publicly.

Witness: Sgt. Bales, accused of Afghan massacre, was deemed a top soldier

Early Saturday, three survivors answered questions via video-link from Kandahar Air Field to a hearing at a U.S. Army base in Washington state - the first time Afghan witnesses have testified under oath about what transpired on March 11.

"He shot me right here," said Haji Mohamed Naim, the father of nine sons in the village of Alkozai, the scene of the first shootings.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said all he could see was a strong light on the head of a soldier who was not more than half a yard away from him when he started shooting.

Naim said he was awoken in the night by sounds of shots and dogs barking, and then children from the next door house knocked on his door. He then described how an "American" jumped from a wall before confronting him and starting to shoot.

Afghanistan shooting suspect Robert Bales faced financial troubles, records show

Two of Naim's sons, who were also in the compound, said they saw only one U.S. soldier on the night in question.

"Yes, I saw him, he came after me, I went to another room," said Naim's son Sadiquallah, who said he was 13 or 14 years old. He described how he hid behind a curtain in a storage room with one other child, and was hit in the ear with a bullet, but did not see who fired the shot.

"How many Americans did you see?" one of the prosecution attorneys asked Sadiquallah. "One," he replied.

'I saw the American'
His older brother Quadratullah, who said he was 14, was unscathed in the attack, but said he saw a U.S. soldier shooting other children.

"Yes I saw the American," he answered a government attorney. "I said 'We are children, we are children', and he shot one of the kids," Quadratullah said, through an interpreter.

"We saw only one American," he added.

At a courtroom at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Bales sat impassively throughout the proceedings, watching the witnesses on a TV screen in front of him.

The Afghan villagers testified on the fifth day of a hearing to establish whether there is enough evidence to put Bales before a court martial.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com 

A veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder, as well as charges of assault and wrongfully possessing and using steroids and alcohol while deployed.

Prosecutors have presented physical evidence to tie Bales to the crime scene, with a forensic investigator saying a sample of blood on Bales' clothes matched a swab taken in one of the compounds where the shooting occurred.

Bales' lawyers have not set out an alternative theory, but have pointed up inconsistencies in testimony and highlighted incidents before the shooting where Bales lost his temper easily or appeared unbalanced, possibly setting up an argument that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gathering evidence and witness statements was complicated by the speedy burial of victims, the inability of U.S. investigators to access the crime scenes for three weeks after the violence for fears of revenge attacks, and the dispersal of possible witnesses after treatment at a Kandahar hospital.

Bales' lead civil defense attorney John Henry Browne, who is in Kandahar to question the witnesses, complained early in the investigation that his team was denied access to villagers wounded in the attacks.

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The Army said Monday that an unborn child was not among the 17 victims in the shooting massacre of civilians in two villages in Afghanistan allegedly perpetrated by Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, contradicting an Afghan official who spoke to The New York Times.

Kandahar Province Police Chief Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq told The New York Times that one of the slain females was pregnant and Americans were counting her unborn fetus as a victim. But Army Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings, Jr., told msnbc.com a fetus was not among the victims of the March 11 attacks in which Bales, 38, is charged with premeditated murder.

“The information that we have collected up to now, this is not true,” Cummings, a spokesman for NATO's ISAF & U.S. Forces - Afghanistan, wrote in an email to msnbc.com. “The 17th is not from a pregnant female or any of the wounded passing away. At this time, the evidence available to the prosecution team indicates 17 victims of premeditated murder and 6 victims of assault and attempted premeditated murder.” 

The death toll breaks down to four men and women each, and nine children, Cummings wrote. One man and one woman, plus four more children, were wounded.

“I think one of the things you can assume is that it was difficult to collect evidence in this case and it was difficult for them to necessarily identify every victim right away,” said Michael Navarre, a director of the National Institute of Military Justice and a former Navy prosecutor and defense counsel.

New details emerged over the weekend in the case. Military prosecutors told NBC News that the attacks came in two waves, with Bales allegedly returning to his base after the first attack and then slipping out again.

The father of two from Bellevue, Wash., was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault. He is being held at a U.S. military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

His wife, Karilyn Bales, said she did not believe her husband had done this.

“I don't think anything will really change my mind in believing that he did not do this,’’ she told TODAY’s Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview that aired Monday. “This is not what it appears to be.’’

Military wives rally around Karilyn Bales

“I just don't think he was involved,’’ she said. “I don't know enough information. This is not him. It's not him."

The timeline of the killings remains unclear. One Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return at 1:30 a.m., and the guard’s replacement saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m., but it was unclear whether it was the same soldier.

There are reports that there is surveillance video, and that Bales allegedly walked back to the base and turned himself in.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

Karilyn Bales said her husband was fit for a fourth deployment and that she was not aware of any obvious signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or the traumatic brain injury that he allegedly suffered on one of his tours. 

Bales was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had spent three years in Iraq on his previous tours, during which time he lost part of a foot and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to a vehicle rollover, media reports say. Two days before he allegedly attacked the Afghan villagers, he saw the aftermath of a bombing in which a fellow soldier had his leg blown off, The Associated Press reported.

Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect the defense to mount a legal pincer attack, in which Bales’ attorneys may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.

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

Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said the fact that the crime occurred in a combat zone in a distant country complicates the task for prosecutors given the possibility of numerous crime scene complications. But they agreed that pursuing an insanity defense based on PTSD would be a difficult case to make, too.

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