KABUL — The US-led coalition in Afghanistan apologized Friday for mistakenly killing a 2-year-old boy during an airstrike, the latest crisis to confront officials hoping to finalize a long-term security agreement between the two countries.
Late Thursday, Karzai blasted the US military for the death and accused coalition troops serving in Afghanistan of ‘‘oppressions.” Within hours, US and coalition military leaders were rushing to try to control the fallout of the strike, which also wounded two women.
Marine General Joseph Dunford, commander of US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, called Karzai to apologize. The international coalition said it deeply regrets the mistake.
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The civilian casualties come at a difficult time for US diplomats, who have watched with dismay over the past week as Karzai appeared increasingly dismissive of plans to keep up to 10,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan after 2014.
In a series of public statements, Karzai has maintained he might wait until next year to decide, though the administration is urging him to sign the agreement by the end of this year. If he does not, administration officials say, they will prepare to withdraw all US forces by the end of next year.
The child’s death further complicates the strained relationship.
Aimal Faizi, a Karzai spokesman, said Friday evening the agreement will be signed only after there is an ‘‘absolute end to all military operations and airstrikes on residential areas by foreign troops that can result in civilian casualties.”
He added: ‘‘Apologies cannot bring back lives.”
Karzai said a missile from a suspected US drone was fired into a house Thursday in the province of Helmand. The coalition acknowledged a strike Friday morning, saying that a child was apparently killed during an operation targeting ‘‘an insurgent riding a motorbike.”
A senior coalition official said the child was on the road and denied Karzai’s claim that a house had been targeted.
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The target, also killed, was a ‘‘mid-level Taliban commander who had been involved in attacks” on coalition troops and was ‘‘organizing and facilitating lethal aid to insurgents in the area,” said the official.
‘‘If [Karzai] represents what the majority of Afghans want, it’s going to be hard to maintain those kind of missions,” said Robert Loftis, a professor at Boston University. ‘‘He’s playing a dangerous game here, and he may convince, if not the [Obama] administration, the American public, ‘Hey, why are we doing this?’ ”