MANAMA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited a U.S. aircraft carrier this week as the U.S. military tried to reassure him about air strikes he has bitterly denounced for causing civilian casualties.

Karzai paid a visit on Thursday to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which launches bombing missions on insurgent targets in Afghanistan from the Indian Ocean, the U.S. Navy said.

In one of a string of recent strongly worded complaints about international military operations, Karzai said last month he would bring down U.S. warplanes bombing villages if he could, before they dropped bombs on Afghan villages.

Afghanistan has suffered its worst violence this year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban Islamist government in 2001, with at least 4,000 people killed, around a third of them civilians.

Afghan officials have blamed NATO and U.S. forces for scores of civilian deaths. Western forces say they go to great lengths to avoid such casualties and have blamed the Taliban and other insurgents for hiding among innocent people.

"President Karzai was able to see first hand the professionalism demonstrated by our personnel and gain a better understanding of how we do operations," U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Bill Gortney said in a statement released on Friday.

Gortney, head of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, who accompanied Karzai on the visit, said the Afghan leader had not raised his concerns about the air strikes.

"He was there ... fact-finding and quite frankly was very grateful for our support," Gortney told reporters travelling with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at his headquarters in Bahrain. (Reporting by Frederik Richter and Andrew Gray; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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