US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder, assault and a string of other offences in the massacre of Afghan villagers as they slept, a US official said.

The last American combat brigade left Iraq today.

South Korea’s foreign minister today praised front-line US troops protecting the border with North Korea, and called on the communist state to abandon a quest for nuclear weapons that has raised tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.

A car bomb exploded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today, wounding at least 10 Iraqi civilians, the US military said.