The Taliban have launched two co-ordinated assaults at opposite ends of Afghanistan, attacking the northern city of Kunduz from several directions and killing a police chief in Helmand in the south.

The Taliban have seized a district in Afghanistan's north-eastern Kunduz province, where the insurgents briefly overran the provincial capital last year before being driven out by a counter offensive, an official said.

Fourteen Nepalese security guards were killed when a Taliban suicide bomber attacked their minibus in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, the Interior Ministry and an Afghan security official said.

A suicide car bomb attack near the Kabul airport has killed at least one person.

Two service personnel from the RAF have been killed following a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

The Taliban have chosen late supreme leader Mullah Omar’s longtime deputy to replace him, two militant commanders announced, as Pakistan said peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government had been postponed.

A Taliban attack on a Kabul guesthouse has left 14 people dead, including nine foreigners, in the most audacious assault by the insurgents in the Afghan capital since the start of their spring offensive.

Gunmen have launched a pre-dawn attack on Kabul International Airport in the Afghan capital, raining down rockets, setting off a gunbattle with security forces and forcing the airport to close for hours.

The former pastor of the parents of a US soldier released from Taliban captivity after nearly five years says they have been “really hurt” by claims that he was a traitor and the outpouring of anger towards their family.

A Swedish journalist has been shot to death while he was talking to a translator on a street in Kabul, the second killing in two months to strike foreigners in an affluent and well-guarded area of the Afghan capital.

A Taliban suicide bomber and two gunmen attacked a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul that is popular with foreigners and affluent Afghans, killing 16 people, including foreigners dining inside and two other gunmen, officials said.

An Afghan man wearing the uniform of the country’s security forces turned his weapon on Nato troops in eastern Afghanistan, killing a member of the international coalition.

Suicide attackers blew up a car bomb and battled security forces outside Afghanistan’s presidential palace today after infiltrating one of the most secure areas of the capital, Kabul.

The Taliban said yesterday it was determined to kill Britain’s Prince Harry, serving in Afghanistan four years after his previous deployment was cut short over security concerns.

Afghanistan’s Taliban said they launched a spring offensive yesterday with multiple attacks against Western embassies in the central diplomatic area and at parliament in Kabul, with heavy explosions, rockets and gunfire rattling the city.

Suspected insurgents opened fire yesterday on senior Afghan investigators of the massacre of 16 civilians by a lone US soldier, killing a member of their security detail, hours after the Taliban threatened to behead American troops to avenge Sunday’s killings.

AFGHAN police continued to sift through one of Kabul’s landmark hotels room by room for any more casualties, securing the building after an overnight assault by Taliban suicide bombers killed eight Afghan civilians and police and one foreigner.

AT LEAST five suicide bombers attacked a major hotel frequented by Westerners in Afghanistan’s capital, a senior police officer said, with fighting continuing as police cleared the building.

A SUICIDE attack on an army recruitment centre in northern Afghanistan killed at least 37 people in the third major assault in the area in less than a month, the deputy governor said.

Video of an American soldier captured in Afghanistan last June, showing him pleading for his freedom, was released by the Taliban today.

The Taliban released a video today showing a US soldier who was captured more than five months ago in eastern Afghanistan.

A SURPRISED world greeted the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama with a mixture of praise and scepticism.

TALIBAN fighters will not wreck Afghanistan’s presidential election today, President Hamid Karzai said last night, after fighters clashed with police in the centre of Kabul and threatened to shut the country’s roads.

TALIBAN militants launched suicide bomb and gun attacks yesterday on three Afghan government buildings, killing at least 26 people, including eight attackers in one of the most daring assaults on the capital to date.