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A NATO special operations team mistakenly killed a relative of President Hamid Karzai during a raid late Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday, the latest incident in recent days to trigger an angry reaction from the president.

The attack on the boys amounted to one of the worst cases of mistaken killings of children by foreign-led forces in the Afghanistan war.

NATO is ready to begin turning security over to Afghan forces next year, U.S. leaders said on Friday, as the first step in a plan to withdraw almost all foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The military handover from NATO-led forces to Afghans could run past an end-2014 target date in some areas because of lingering security problems, a senior NATO official in Afghanistan said on Wednesday.

Pakistan closed the border crossing after a NATO airstrike killed two Pakistani soldiers along the border and raised tensions between Pakistan and the United States.

Suspected militants in Pakistan attacked NATO tankers carrying fuel to Afghanistan on Friday, officials said.

There was no sign of enemy fire, but the incident was under investigation, according to a NATO statement.

Seven U.S. troops were killed in two separate roadside bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan on Monday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

The American military has not yet confirmed the deaths from Friday’s strike. It would be the worst civilian toll in an attack in almost a year.

Western military officials acknowledge that none of those in a car fired on by soldiers had links to the insurgency.