Two gunmen on a motorbike killed the provincial director of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs outside her home in the southern city of Kandahar today.

Al-Qaida has sent several fighters from Iraq to join insurgents in Afghanistan, a provincial governor said after interrogating an Iraqi suspect who was caught sneaking across the country’s western border.

A suicide bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up at an army checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan, killing five other people and wounding four, police said today.