Firefights broke out between Nato forces and Afghan police in two parts of Afghanistan overnight, with four Afghan officers killed in one of the incidents, officials said today.

The death toll in the attack on an international hotel in Kabul has risen to 10.

TENS of thousands of hard-line government supporters turned out for state-sponsored rallies yesterday, some of them calling for the execution of opposition leaders as Iran’s police chief threatened to show “no mercy” in crushing any new protests by the pro-reform movement.

THE spiritual leader of a group with suspected links to al-Qaida yesterday denied that he ordered deadly bomb attacks against dozens of churches on Christmas Eve 2000 and called the charges “lies from America”.

ONE blackened body after another was yesterday pulled from the blood-spattered remains of a tourist nightclub ripped apart