International troops and Afghan police seized 250 tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser – enough to make hundreds of roadside bombs, the Taliban’s most lethal weapon in what has been the deadliest year of the war.

Five British soldiers have been killed by a rogue Afghan policeman, British and Afghan officials said today.

The Pentagon today confirmed that an American soldier who went missing from his base in Afghanistan has been captured and identified him as a private from Idaho serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment.

BOMB blasts killed four US marines in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of American troops have deployed in recent weeks as part of an offensive in the country’s dangerous drug-producing region, an official said yesterday.

AFGHAN police have arrested 10 Taliban militants involved in an acid attack this month against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said yesterday.

AFGHAN police rescued a German aid worker — who was snatched while dining with her husband at a restaurant in the capital Kabul — and arrested four suspected kidnappers in the sting operation yesterday, officials said.

At least 21 rebels were killed today in fighting between Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a volatile southern province.

UN peacekeepers and Afghan police have uncovered a cache of 151 Chinese-made rockets on the road between Kabul and Bagram.

At least 55 people were injured today when violence broke out a soccer match between UN peacekeepers and a local team in the Afghan capital, Kabul.