British defence secretary Des Browne today denied that senior military officers have urged the Government to withdraw troops from Iraq to concentrate on the campaign in Afghanistan.

Nato defence ministers were today expected to approve an extension of the alliance’s Afghan security mission across the whole of the country, taking in the volatile eastern region and bringing around 10,000 US troops under allied command.

The US Army has opened a review of casualty reports on American soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 2001, a response to complaints that it has not always given families accurate information.

The US military resumed relief flights in northern Pakistan today but would stay a “safe distance” from where one of its choppers allegedly came under attack as it ferried supplies to victims of the massive earthquake in divided Kashmir, a spokesman said.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the US would maintain a forceful military presence in Afghanistan despite pressure to free forces stretched by the insurgency in Iraq.

The pilot of a US Air Force U-2 spy plane died in a crash while returning to a base in southwest Asia, the military said today.

Fighting between insurgents and US-led coalition and Afghan forces in the country’s troubled east left 12 rebels dead and one US soldier slightly wounded, the US military said today.

US MARINES tracked down a band of insurgents in eastern Afghanistan and sparked a battle that left about 23 rebels and two American troops dead, the US military said yesterday, in the latest sign of a revived Taliban-led insurgency.

A US soldier and four Afghan police officers were killed in separate rebel attacks, while at least two Afghan civilians were injured by gunfire following the bombing of an American patrol in the east of the country, American and Afghan officials said today.

Seven US soldiers were killed, one was missing and three were injured in an explosion at an arms cache in Afghanistan today, the US Central Command said.

DISGRUNTLED factions within Afghanistan’s coalition government have held a series of meetings to consider withdrawing their support for President Hamid Karzai in the run-up to elections next year, officials said yesterday.

Organisers of the largest military air show in Europe said today the event will be cancelled this year due to operational duties surrounding the war on terrorism.

One year after US warplanes began a massive bombing assault that sparked the overthrow of the Taliban and forced al-Qaida fighters to retreat, terrorists still pose a threat to the stability of the government, Afghanistan’s foreign minister said today.

US troops raiding Afghanistan have left behind copies of a photograph taken in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The US military is paying for the exclusive rights to commercial satellite imagery of Afghanistan even though its own satellites are thought to take far better pictures.

A US Air Force sergeant has been killed in an accident in the Arabian Peninsula, becoming the first American death in Operation Enduring Freedom.

A US Army soldier who was critically injured when trapped between two trucks tonight become the first official US casualty of Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign against terrorism, officials said.

Britain and America have launched strikes against Afghanistan.