THE Afghan hunger strikers in Dublin are desperate as a result of the Government’s refusal to accept them here.

A purported senior commander from Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban militia today claimed the radical group’s fugitive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden are alive and well.

A suicide attacker detonated grenades on a commercial street in central Kabul today, killing himself and injuring seven other people, including three foreign peacekeepers, officials said.

A bomb ripped through a small bus today in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, killing 15 people and wounding eight others, a provincial deputy governor said.

A bomb ripped through a small bus today in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, killing four people and wounding eight others, provincial Deputy Governor Haji Pir Mohammed said.

US-BACKED Afghan troops killed eight suspected Taliban and captured 15 others in fighting against extremists holed up in the Torghar mountains of southern Afghanistan, the US military said yesterday.

THE al-Qaida network and Afghanistan-deposed Taliban militia have sent several shipments of gold to Sudan in recent weeks, the Washington Post reported yesterday, citing European, Pakistani and US investigators.

Malaysian police have arrested two more suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked militant group.

A leader of Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban militia was critically injured in a US air strike last month, and nobody has seen him since, a news agency reported.

US military planes bombed and destroyed a building where top al-Qaida terrorist leaders were believed to have gathered, a US official said.

Pakistan's Islamic groups say they will continue nationwide rallies in support of the Taliban militia.

The opposition Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is claiming Taliban defences north of the capital Kabul have been seriously hit.

The US is urgently working to land hundreds more commandos in Afghanistan to intensify pressure on the Taliban, according to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In buses and trucks, pickups and vans, more than 5,000 people rolled out of a northeastern Pakistan village this morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war against the United States.

US jets targeted the heart of Afghanistan’s capital today, pounding a district that housed a Taliban tank unit and other military installations.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf today said his country will cooperate with United States military efforts in neighbouring Afghanistan as long as it takes for the operation to be successful.

The US has launched its first daylight raid on Afghanistan.

Fighter jets have bombed the stronghold of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia in southern Kandahar hours after dawn today, Taliban officials said.

The bombing campaign in Afghanistan has scaled back slightly during a second round of attacks.

The first US/British strikes in Afghanistan were focused on military targets such as airfields and command centres.

Uzbek troops along the border with Afghanistan have been put on alert.

Some of Pakistan’s most influential clerics swiftly denounced the US and British attacks, calling them an attack against Islam and grounds for holy war.

A militant Muslim group has denounced the attacks on targets in Afghanistan.

Many prominent officials of the Islamic regime are crossing the border into Pakistan, including ministers, judges and members of the Taliban militia's religious police.

A delegation of senior Pakistani officials will go to Afghanistan tomorrow to demand that the ruling Taliban militia hand over Osama bin Laden to the US, a top Government official said.

Afghanistan's Taliban militia has now confirmed that Osama bin Laden is under house arrest.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia is reportedly bracing itself for an imminent US attack.

Afghanistan's Taliban militia has denied that Osama bin Laden, the man suspected of masterminding the terrorist attacks on the US, is under house arrest.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia has pleaded with the Australian Government to accept Afghan asylum seekers stranded aboard a cargo ship.

Fighters in Afghanistan’s civil war have held their fire as health workers fanned out to immunise children against polio during a temporary truce.