Afghanistan’s president today promised to hold international troops more accountable for civilian casualties.

US-led coalition and Afghan security forces aided by airstrikes killed about 25 militants during raids on a Taliban command centre in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said today.

A series of battles in volatile southern and eastern Afghanistan killed 14 suspected militants, a US soldier and an Afghan soldier, while suspected Taliban rebels fatally shot six civilians in a strong of assaults, officials said today.

One of the most prominent faces in Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet, Ahmad Ali Jalali, who had struggled to shake-up the Interior Ministry and combat Afghanistan’s booming drugs trade, announced his resignation today.

A warlord’s secret weapons cache exploded in a remote Afghan village today, flattening nearby houses and a mosque and killing at least 28 people in what appeared to be the deadliest accident of its kind since the fall of the Taliban.

AN independent commission will probe claims by all 15 opposition candidates that Afghanistan's first direct presidential election was marred by incompetence and fraud, a top official said yesterday in an attempt to quash claims the vote was illegitimate.

An independent commission will probe claims by all 15 opposition candidates that Afghanistan’s first direct presidential election was marred by incompetence and fraud, a top official said today in an attempt to quash claims the vote was illegitimate.

Elections heralded as the dawn of democracy in war-ravaged Afghanistan will be hijacked by warlords who are able to intimidate voters and candidates to entrench their own power, a leading rights group warned today.

By Amir ShahHUNDREDS of rival militiamen with tanks and artillery faced off along a narrow front line in northern Afghanistan yesterday, as the government scrambled to stop what it described as the worst fighting in months.

An inmate at a California prison has been charged with beating up American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

British troops are making final preparations for their new security role in Afghanistan aimed at tackling the lawlessness that still dominates large parts of the country.

Several thousand people gathered amid heavy security today at a mosque in northern Afghanistan to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Ahmed Shah Massood.

Hundreds of men - probably Taliban prisoners killed by their Northern Alliance captors - are buried in a mass grave in northern Afghanistan, a US human rights group has said.

Fighting raged today between rival Afghan warlords - both of them officials in the interim government.

The UN Children’s Fund said a spate of attacks on aid workers highlighted deteriorating security in Afghanistan and further hampered badly needed aid delivery.

The US government will not seek the death penalty for the alleged American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

The UN is to start using helicopters to deliver aid to remote mountain regions in northern Afghanistan.

The first group of al-Qaida prisoners has left Afghanistan under tight security to begin the 8,000-mile journey to jail in Cuba.

Representatives of more than 50 Islamic countries have asked the UN to investigate the deaths of hundreds of foreign captives in Afghanistan.

An earthquake has shaken large parts of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Members of Afghanistan’s overthrown Taliban militia who have ‘‘simply changed their turban colour’’ and melted into the population represent a threat to the interim government’s stability, the deputy defence minister has warned.

The future of the British-led multinational security force in Afghanistan was unclear today as Afghan leaders were divided about how long it should remain in the war-ravaged nation.

Afghan leaders were divided today over how long the British-led multinational security force should remain in the war-ravaged nation.

Taliban prisoners of war claim they are being mistreated.

The Irish charity GOAL has urged the United Nations to put peacekeepers on the ground throughout Afghanistan as soon as possible.

The first British peacekeepers have flown into Afghanistan as the United Nations approved their mission to help the nation heal after decades of war.

An explosion ripped through a market in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif today, wounding 100 people, six of them seriously, according to hospital officials.

With gifts of colourful carpets and traditional robes, a Northern Alliance warlord today bid farewell to American Special Forces who joined his fighters in the battle to seize Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taliban.

The American captured with Taliban fighters is being held by Marines in Afghanistan and will be handed over to US civilian authorities as soon as possible, the Pentagon has said.

The first aid train has crossed a bridge from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan.

Amnesty International has renewed its call for an inquiry into the massacre of Taliban prisoners during an uprising at a prison fort near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif last month.

US forces have questioned an American found among Taliban fighters but have not yet decided what to do with him.

The body of the first American known to have died in combat in Afghanistan has arrived back home.

A man calling himself a US citizen was among more than 80 Taliban fighters captured from a basement at an Afghan fort.

Rival Afghan factions were today trying to agree on the members of an interim government for the country, as a man believed to be a US citizen was found among captured Taliban fighters.

More than 80 remaining Taliban prisoners holed up in a prison fortress were flushed out from their hiding places.

Banditry on Afghanistan roads is making it too dangerous to deliver help to many remote areas where millions of hungry Afghans are effectively cut off, the UN World Food Programme has said.

The US military has expressed its regret after two Afghan civilians were killed when aid supplies dropped by parachute crushed their house.

The Taliban’s supreme leader reportedly urged his forces to ‘‘fight to the death’’ today as US forces strengthened their presence near his stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

More than a half-dozen senior leaders of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and several hundred of his most loyal fighters have been killed in the war in Afghanistan so far, US officials say.

The first US soldier has been confirmed killed in action in Afghanistan.

The Red Cross today carried out the bodies of Taliban captives killed during a violent three day uprising that devastated the fortress where they had been held.

The Northern Alliance has opened a fortress up to journalists near Mazar-e-Sharif after crushing a three-day uprising by Taliban prisoners.

A senior Taliban representative has denied the group's top leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was injured or killed in US air strikes on Tuesday.