At least nine passengers were killed when a remote-controlled bomb struck a bus in Afghanistan today, police said.

Heavily armed Taliban insurgents have killed 18 people – most of them civilians - in an attack on a lakeside hotel just north of Kabul.

Afghan police say Taliban suicide bombers have attacked a lakeside hotel north of Kabul, and that militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades have taken hostages and are continuing to fight Afghan security forces there.

THE head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been trying to negotiate a political end to the war, was killed yesterday, a senior police officer said.

A SENIOR adviser to Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been murdered along with an member of parliament visiting him at his Kabul home, a senior government official said yesterday.

A senior Taliban commander disguised as a woman was killed by Afghan and international forces today after he opened fire with a pistol and tried to throw a grenade south of the capital Kabul.

Suicide bombers struck in the heart of the Afghan capital Kabul today, triggering a series of explosions and gun battles that killed at least 17 people, police said.

TALIBAN threats appeared to dampen voter turnout in the militant south yesterday, when Afghans chose the next president for their deeply troubled country.

A suicide car bomber ignited a huge blast in the Afghanistan capital Kabul today near two armoured vehicles used by US-led coalition troops, killing at least two civilians and destroying the wall of a nearby house, witnesses and officials said.

The Taliban’s newly-named top field commander has used his first public statement today to warn that new recruits were volunteering as suicide bombers and that Taliban fighters would continue their holy war until Western powers leave Afghanistan.

A huge blast destroyed several shops and houses in Kabul early today, killing at least four people, police said.

A CAR bomb targeting a British military convoy killed four Afghan civilians and one British soldier in the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday, NATO and Afghan officials said. Ten people were wounded.

Roadblocks were set around the Afghanistan capital of Kabul today to search for a Northern Irish UN worker who was kidnapped with two colleagues.