Five Nato troops who died in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan today are thought to be British.

THIS year, Western troops will withdraw from Afghanistan after 13 years of war.

A Taliban suicide bomber and two gunmen attacked a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul that is popular with foreigners and affluent Afghans, killing 16 people, including foreigners dining inside and two other gunmen, officials said.

The US has confirmed that American troops are holding a senior Pakistani Taliban commander.

An Afghan man wearing the uniform of the country’s security forces turned his weapon on Nato troops in eastern Afghanistan, killing a member of the international coalition.

Fourteen Afghan soldiers and 64 Taliban militants have been killed in fighting and roadside bombings across the country in the past 24 hours.

Taliban fighters beheaded two boys aged 10 and 16 as a warning to villagers not to cooperate with the Afghan government, local officials said.

A man in an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on his international trainers in the country’s east, killing three of them, according to the international military coalition in Afghanistan.

A suicide bomber targeting an American military delegation outside a government office in eastern Afghanistan has killed 13 people, including 10 schoolchildren and two international service members.

President Barack Obama and Afghan president Hamid Karzai have agreed to speed up the schedule for moving Afghanistan’s security forces into the lead across the country, with US troops shifting fully to a support role.

A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform has shot and killed a service member fighting with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to Nato.

A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near the gate of a US-Afghan combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan this morning, wounding 10 Afghan soldiers, officials said.

The 33,000 additional US troops that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan to stamp out the Taliban attacks nearly two years ago have now left the country, but a new wave of deadly insider attacks and a reassessment of how Nato troops partner with Afghans have raised questions about how well the military strategy is working.

Formal control of Afghanistan's only large-scale US-run prison has been handed over to Kabul, even as disagreements between the two countries over the thousands of Taliban and terror suspects held there marred the transfer.

An Afghan policeman has opened fire on Nato soldiers in the fifth such attack in a week, but this time no-one was killed.

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in a wedding hall in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 23 people including a prominent warlord-turned-politician and three Afghan security force officials, in an attack that deals a setback to efforts to unify the nation’s ethnic factions, Afghan officials said.

All French combat forces will pull out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, France's new president said in Kabul today.

A man wearing an Afghan army uniform has shot dead a US soldier, one of two Nato service members killed today.

A roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan has killed 10 members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), officials said.

Six soldiers are missing, believed killed, after an armoured vehicle was caught in an explosion in Afghanistan, the UK's Ministry of Defence said today.

Muslim holy books that were burned in a pile of rubbish at a US military base in Afghanistan had been removed from a library at a nearby detention centre because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions, a western military official said today.

More than 2,000 angry Afghans have gathered outside a US airbase to protest against the inadvertent burning of Korans and other Islamic religious materials.

Nato’s top official has joined the US and France in calling for Afghan forces to take the lead in all combat operations by mid-2013, while continuing to help in fighting the Taliban.

An Afghan soldier shot and killed a Nato service member in southern Afghanistan, officials said today.

A man wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire on coalition troops in western Afghanistan, Nato officials said today.

Five Nato troops killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan today were all Poles.

Thirteen people killed when a suicide bomber rammed a military convoy in Afghanistan included five coalition troops and eight civilian contractors, Nato has said.

AFGHANISTAN will need financial and military support for many years after a 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to return home.

The Taliban attacked the US Embassy, Nato headquarters and other buildings in the heart of Kabul today while suicide bombers struck police buildings.

A BOMB exploded near a police station outside a crucial city in Afghanistan’s south yesterday where Afghan forces are readying to assume security responsibility within hours, another worrying sign as insurgents seek to disrupt a gradual transition process.

Foreign troops were among a number of people killed and wounded when an Afghan Army officer opened fire after an argument at Kabul’s airport today.

Twenty people were killed and 50 others injured when a team of suicide bombers shot their way into the compound of a road construction company in eastern Afghanistan and detonated a truck loaded with explosives, the Afghan government said today.

At least 25 people were killed in a Nato airstrike in southern Afghanistan today amid reports that a mosque had been hit.

Two Nato troops were killed in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan today.

Insurgents attacked a Nato and Afghan army outpost in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, Nato officials said today, killing 29 of the militants in the resulting skirmish.

THE spat between Pakistan and Britain deepened last night after President Asif Ali Zardari warned the war in Afghanistan was being lost.

A ROGUE Afghan soldier attacked his coalition allies with a rocket-propelled grenade and other weapons yesterday, killing three British troops and wounding four more before fleeing, officials said.

Dutch troops will begin leaving southern Afghanistan in August, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said today.

Taliban fighters are increasingly using civilians as human shields in the assault on the southern town of Marjah, an Afghan official said today as military squads resumed painstaking house-to-house searches in the Taliban stronghold.

The international military effort in Afghanistan was under-resourced for years, the head of the British Army said today as US troops prepared to take over operations in an area which has seen some of the bloodiest fighting for British forces.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday toured the nerve centre of NATO command in Afghanistan, telling officers an imminent troop surge would turn around the eight-year war against the Taliban.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today praised the work of UK troops in Afghanistan, promising more help for them to overcome the threat of roadside bombs planted by the Taliban.

Nearly 3,000 American soldiers who arrived in Afghanistan to secure two violent provinces have begun operations and are already seeing combat.

THE public should not expect “a decisive military victory” in Afghanistan, Britain’s most senior military commander in the country warned yesterday.