US President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan today for a first-hand look at the eight-year-old war he inherited and has dramatically escalated.

A suicide bomber killed 10 civilians today and wounded seven others in an attack on an Afghan army patrol at a bridge in the southern province of Helmand.

A suicide squad detonated bombs at a newly fortified prison, police headquarters and two other locations in Afghanistan today, killing at least 30 people in the largest city of the southern Taliban heartland.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai heard a litany of complaints today from residents of Marjah, the southern town that thousands of US, NATO Hand Afghan troops recently seized from the Taliban.

Four Nato troops died in separate attacks across Afghanistan today, including a suicide car bomber who targeted a military convoy in the Taliban-dominated south.

A suicide car bomber targeted Nato forces today outside the major southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing four civilians, the Interior Ministry said.

British commanders said the ongoing offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan was going well, despite the deaths of three servicemen in as many days.

Suicide bombers struck in the heart of the Afghan capital Kabul today, triggering a series of explosions and gun battles that killed at least 17 people, police said.

The Afghan government took official control of the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah today as Nato troops worked to root out final pockets of militants.

The commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan took his apology for an airstrike that killed civilians directly to the Afghan people, with a video in which he pledged to work to regain their trust.

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

Elite US Marine reconnaissance teams were dropped behind Taliban lines by helicopter today as coalition forces stepped up operations in Afghanistan to break resistance in the besieged insurgent stronghold of Marjah.

MORE Taliban leaders have been captured in Pakistan following the arrest of its deputy leader.

More Taliban leaders have been captured in Pakistan following the arrest of the group’s deputy leader.

A bomb at a mosque in Pakistan’s north-western tribal belt killed 29 people today.

Troops raised the Afghan flag in the bullet-ridden main market of the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Marjah today as fighting continued elsewhere in town.

Taliban fighters are increasingly using civilians as human shields in the assault on the southern town of Marjah, an Afghan official said today as military squads resumed painstaking house-to-house searches in the Taliban stronghold.

Three more Afghan civilians have been killed in the assault on a southern Taliban stronghold, Nato forces said today.

The Taliban’s top military commander has been captured in Pakistan, it was reported today.

An airstrike against suspected insurgents has killed five civilians in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, Nato said tonight.

Sniper teams attacked US Marines and Afghan troops across the Taliban haven of Marjah in Afghanistan as several gun battles erupted on the third day of a major offensive to seize the extremists’ southern heartland.

Twelve Afghans died today when two rockets fired at insurgents missed their target and struck a house during the second day of Operation Moshtarak – Nato’s most ambitious effort yet to break the militants’ grip on the country’s dangerous south.

Squads of US Marines and Afghan soldiers slowly pressed deeper into the Taliban stronghold of Marjah today, painstakingly clearing out booby-trapped houses one by one.

Two Nato troops and a British soldier have been killed during the ongoing anti-Taliban offensive in Afghanistan.

The fiercest military offensive on the Taliban since the conflict in Afghanistan began has so far gone “as well as it could have done”, British Army chiefs said today.

US Marines and Afghan soldiers stormed the Taliban-held town of Marjah today, as a major offensive began to break the extremists’ grip over a wide area of their southern heartland and re-establish government control.

About 300 families have already fled a southern Afghan town ahead of a major new offensive planned on a key Taliban stronghold, provincial officials said today.

The US Army launched a major operation today in support of a planned US-Afghan attack on the largest Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan.