A powerful rocket exploded near one of Kabul’s few luxury hotels tonight, knocking some guests from restaurant chairs and shattering windows across the reception and in many bedrooms.

The UN refugee agency began pulling foreign staff out of large swathes of southern and eastern Afghanistan today in the wake of the killing of a French worker, a decision that could affect tens of thousands of Afghan returnees.

A FRENCH woman working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was shot dead yesterday in the Afghan town of Ghazni when two men on a motorcycle opened fire on her vehicle with a pistol.