A suicide bomber has killed five soldiers from the Nato-led international coalition outside a military base in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.

A suicide car bomber killed a deputy governor and five other people in eastern Afghanistan today, police said.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday toured the nerve centre of NATO command in Afghanistan, telling officers an imminent troop surge would turn around the eight-year war against the Taliban.

AN Afghan official says a Taliban suicide attack has killed 24 people east of Kabul, including the country’s deputy chief of intelligence and the head of a provincial council.

Afghanistan’s deputy chief of intelligence has been killed in an explosion, officials said today.

President Hamid Karzai has condemned a US operation he says killed 16 Afghan civilians, while hundreds of villagers denounced the American military during an angry demonstration.

A roadside blast killed one Nato soldier and wounded two others in eastern Afghanistan, a statement from the alliance said today.

Nato troops shot and killed a motorcyclist travelling at a high speed as his vehicle approached a security cordon in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said today.

AFGHAN intelligence officials have thwarted a plot to assassinate US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and arrested three Pakistanis armed with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said yesterday.

US MARINES tracked down a band of insurgents in eastern Afghanistan and sparked a battle that left about 23 rebels and two American troops dead, the US military said yesterday, in the latest sign of a revived Taliban-led insurgency.

US Marines tracked down a band of insurgents in eastern Afghanistan and sparked a battle that left about 12 rebels and two American troops dead, the US military said today.

AFGHAN rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said he is proud that the US has branded him a terrorist and echoed Osama bin Laden’s call for suicide attacks against Americans, according to a statement released yesterday.