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.

Doctors Without Borders has called for an independent and unprecedented fact-finding mission to investigate a US air strike on a hospital run by the medical aid group in Afghanistan that killed at least 22 people.

Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres denied that Taliban fighters were firing from its hospital at Afghan and NATO forces before a suspected US air strike killed at least 19 people in a battle to oust the Islamist insurgents from an Afghan city.

Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency said that the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been dead for more than two years.

Nine insurgents have been killed during a raid by Afghan security forces backed by local citizens in the country’s north, an Afghan official said.

A gunman has killed the head of the election commission in a northern Afghan province, local officials said.

A suicide bomber has attacked people leaving a memorial service at a mosque in northern Afghanistan, killing his apparent target, a district chief, while leaving several others dead or wounded, police said.

Formal control of Afghanistan's only large-scale US-run prison has been handed over to Kabul, even as disagreements between the two countries over the thousands of Taliban and terror suspects held there marred the transfer.

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.

Protesters angry over the burning of the Koran by American troops lobbed grenades at a US base in northern Afghanistan and clashed with police and troops in a day of violence that left seven international soldiers injured and two Afghans dead.

The commander of Nato and US forces says that all Nato personnel are being recalled from Afghan ministries following an attack at the Interior Ministry in Kabul.

An Afghan man killed his wife for giving birth to a third daughter rather than the son he hoped for, police in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province said yesterday.

An Afghan mother has been murdered by her husband, angry that she gave birth to a second daughter rather than the son he wanted.

AN Afghan family who refused to give their daughter in marriage to a man they considered irresponsible were attacked at home by unknown gunmen who beat the father and then poured acid over both parents and three children, officials said.

A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle outside an Afghan hotel frequented by foreigners today, killing at least four guards.

A senior leader of an al Qaida-linked terror group has been captured in Afghanistan, dressed as a woman.

A SUICIDE car bomber attacked a health clinic in eastern Afghanistan yesterday as women and children lined up for maternity care and vaccinations, killing at least 35 people in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians this year.

At least 10 people, including a police officer, were killed when a bicycle rigged with explosives blew up in a bazaar in northern Afghanistan, authorities said today.

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.

At least 28 people, including civilians, have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a government office in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, police said today.

A Taliban roadside bomb killed 15 civilians in a dangerous and remote region of southern Afghanistan.

An air strike and a raid by ground troops in Afghanistan has killed eight insurgents, including a senior Taliban leader who spearheaded attacks against Afghan security forces in northern Afghanistan, Nato said today.

Six children have been killed in an insurgent rocket attack in northern Afghanistan, authorities said today.

Insurgents killed eight Afghan policemen today in a raid on a checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz, local police said.

A YOUNG couple have been stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan for eloping.

A young couple have been stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan for eloping.

At least 11 police officers and a government official were killed by militant attacks in in once-calm northern Afghanistan, authorities said today.

Six American service members and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks today in Afghanistan’s volatile east and south, adding to a summer of escalating violence as Taliban militants push back against stepped-up operations by international and Afghan forces.

Suicide bombers attacked a US international development compound today in northern Afghanistan, killing at least four people and wounding several others.

Search teams today reached the remote Afghan mountain site where a commercial airliner crashed this week and found no sign of survivors among the 44 people aboard.

Insurgents launched a brazen pre-dawn assault today against the giant US-run Bagram Air Field, the second Taliban strike at Nato forces in and around the capital in as many days.

Up 44 people are missing after a passenger plane crashed in a remote area of Afghanistan today.

Nato and Afghan troops killed more than three dozen insurgent fighters in operations in northern and eastern Afghanistan, Afghan police said today.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has called President Hamid Karzai to express her condolences following the accidental killing of several Afghan soldiers by the German military.

The German military said today that its soldiers had accidentally killed five Afghan troops.

Nato admitted accidentally killing at least 27 Afghan civilians today, the third attack this month to have hit the wrong target.

Two Taliban “shadow governors” from northern Afghanistan have been arrested by Pakistani authorities.

A SENIOR ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel resigned from the cabinet yesterday amid allegations of a cover-up of an air strike that killed civilians in Afghanistan when he was defence minister.

Germany will send more than 100 extra troops to Afghanistan in January, the country’s defence minister announced today.

BRITISH commandos freed a New York Times reporter in an early raid yesterday on a Taliban hide-out in northern Afghanistan. The journalist’s Afghan translator and one of the troops were killed in the rescue, officials said.

A British commando was killed during a raid to free a New York Times reporter from his Taliban captors, military officials said today.

Nato’s top commander in Afghanistan confirmed civilians were wounded by a devastating air strike targeting militants in northern Afghanistan.

The top US commander in Afghanistan has confirmed villagers were wounded at the site of a Nato airstrike on hijacked fuel tankers that killed up to 70 people.

Nato was investigating today whether villagers siphoning fuel were among scores killed in a US airstrike on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban.