The Taliban has launched an attack at the airport in the city of Kandahar, Afghan officials said.

President Barack Obama has announced plans to keep nearly 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan through most of next year and 5,500 when he leaves office in 2017, casting aside his promise to end the war on his watch and instead ensuring he hands off the conflict to a successor.

Canada: A Canadian politician has blamed cheap, tight underwear for his sudden departure from parliament causing him to miss a vote on anti-terror legislation. 

Five Afghan police officers have been killed in an attack on a checkpoint in the southern province of Kandahar, officials said today.

An investigation is under way to determine why a Lynx helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing five British service personnel.

Afghans flocked to polling stations nationwide today, defying a threat of violence by the Taliban, to cast their votes in what promises to be the nation’s first democratic transfer of power.

Two children were killed when their family’s vehicle hit a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan today, officials said.

Four civilians have been killed by a bomb hidden inside a cart at a livestock market in southern Afghanistan, a provincial official said.

Eleven members of one family were killed when a minibus hit a bomb buried in the road in southern Afghanistan, officials said today.

PASHTUNABAD — a poor, wind and flyblown suburb of Quetta — is the type of Pakistani town where commanders in the Afghan Taliban lived after being kicked out of their country in 2001.

Taliban fighters beheaded two boys aged 10 and 16 as a warning to villagers not to cooperate with the Afghan government, local officials said.

Two Afghan gunmen have killed a police commander and six of his men at a checkpoint in a remote district in the country’s south.

Five troops killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan are all American, a Nato official has confirmed.

Thirty people on board a bus were killed when their vehicle crashed into the wreckage of a truck that had been attacked by Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Five American service members have been killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan.

Iran’s state TV has broadcast footage allegedly extracted from a CIA drone captured in 2011.

With her blue jeans and outspoken lyrics, Susan Feroz has ruffled plenty of feathers in a country where women are still very much second-class citizens, write Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau

Violence in Afghanistan fell this year, but more Afghan troops and police who now shoulder most of the combat were killed, according to statistics.

A suicide car bomber has killed two Afghan civilians and wounded 14 others near the main US military base in southern Afghanistan.

A roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan has killed a district police chief, officials said.

At least eight people were killed today in attacks in southern Afghanistan, including one incident where a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up at a local intelligence office, officials said.

At least 51 people were killed in a collision between a bus and a truck in eastern Afghanistan today.

Seven American troops are among 11 people who died in a Blackhawk helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, Nato-led forces said today.

Suicide attacks involving as many as 14 bombers struck an Afghan city today, and a motorcycle bomb exploded in a busy market in blasts that killed at least 46 people altogether- the year’s deadliest day for civilians in Afghanistan.

A wave of up to 14 suicide bombers have killed at least 27 people and wounded dozens more in an Afghan city that had been largely peaceful in recent years.

Three British soldiers have been killed by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform who shot them at a checkpoint.

Seven attackers were killed today after storming a base of the Nato coalition in Kandahar province of southern Afghanistan.

Eighteen people killed in a Nato air strike in eastern Afghanistan yesterday were all civilians, president Hamid Karzai said today.

At least 22 people were killed when three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a marketplace in the largest city in southern Afghanistan, authorities have said.

Twenty civilians have been killed in an explosion in Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan, an official said today.

A group of suicide attackers stormed a government compound in western Afghanistan today, killing at least seven people, officials said.

Seven civilians have died after a fuel tanker overturned and caught fire in southern Afghanistan.

A man in an Afghan army uniform has shot dead two Nato troops inside a base in southern Afghanistan.

The US has paid $50,000 (€37,687) in compensation for each Afghan killed and $11,000 for each person wounded in the shooting spree allegedly committed by a US soldier in southern Afghanistan, an official and a community elder in the country said yesterday.

A US soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians split the slaughter into two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again, investigators believe.

A US soldier has been officially charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over a shooting rampage in Afghanistan, military officials said today.

French police have said they will storm the flat where the suspected Jewish school massacre gunman is holed up if he does not surrender.

The American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn shooting rampage was named last night as Staff Sgt Robert Bales.

The American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn shooting rampage was named tonight as Staff Sgt Robert Bales.

The American soldier accused of shooting dead 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn rampage has been flown to Kuwait, it has emerged.

An Afghan man who crashed a stolen vehicle on to the runway at Camp Bastion as US defence secretary Leon Panetta arrived there has died of his injuries.

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.

Militants have attacked an Afghan government delegation visiting the site in one of the two villages in southern Afghanistan where a US soldier is suspected of killing 16 civilians.

Outrage over a murderous rampage by a rogue US soldier who killed 16 villagers gripped Afghanistan yesterday, as parliament called for a public trial and Taliban insurgents vowed revenge.