An Afghan court has overturned the death sentences for four men convicted of taking part in the mob killing of a woman outside a Kabul shrine, a judge said.

Taliban militants have staged a suicide car bombing and a gunfight with Afghan security forces outside the American consulate in the western city of Herat.

The Taliban has denied a report in the Afghan press that leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been killed in neighbouring Pakistan, saying he is alive and in Afghanistan.

One of the most prominent faces in Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet, Ahmad Ali Jalali, who had struggled to shake-up the Interior Ministry and combat Afghanistan’s booming drugs trade, announced his resignation today.