KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO disagreed Thursday over whether an airstrike in northern Afghanistan killed the top member of re-emerging insurgent group or 10 election workers.

The dispute here refueled some of the thorniest issues plaguing U.S.-Afghan relations as Defense Secretary Robert Gates made his first visit to Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ousted Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the Afghanistan commander and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus.

Karzai strongly condemned the attack in a written statement, but he didn’t demand an apology from the U.S. when he appeared at a news conference with Gates, who arrived hours after the strike. Both men called for an investigation.

U.S. officials said the target was a senior member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group that has re-emerged as an ally to the Taliban here. The movement found refuge in Afghanistan under Taliban rule in the 1990s but had largely disappeared after U.S. forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001 until last year, when it resurfaced in northern Afghanistan to help the Taliban expand beyond traditional strongholds in the south and east.

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