Anger over the burning of the Muslim holy book at a church in the US has fuelled a second day of deadly violence in Afghanistan, where demonstrators set cars and shops on fire in a riot which left nine protesters dead.

At least five civilians have been killed in southern Afghanistan during a protest against a US church’s burning of the Muslim holy book.

Seven people have been killed at a UN office in Afghanistan as a protest over the reported burning of the Koran turned violent.

Three Afghan journalists held by coalition forces and Afghanistan’s intelligence service for allegedly spreading Taliban propaganda have been freed, Nato 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.

The deputy governor of Helmand province and five other people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in southern Afghanistan today, officials said.

An Afghan court has sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death after judges said an internet paper he printed and distributed violated the tenets of Islam.

British and Afghan forces attacked Taliban strongholds today after repelling a brazen insurgent attack on a police headquarters a day earlier in a southern Afghan town, killing at least 19 militants, the governor’s spokesman said.

Taliban insurgents have freed a Turkish engineer they kidnapped a month ago as he worked on a road project in southern Afghanistan, officials said today.

BELFAST-born ITV journalist Andrea Catherwood is to tie the knot in the autumn with her lawyer boyfriend, it has emerged.

British troops played a ‘‘very significant’’ part in the rapid advance of the Northern Alliance forces across Northern Afghanistan, Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, said today.

Almost 100 US warplanes have bombed targets in Afghanistan as the Northern Alliance moves its troops to the front line.

Taliban authorities have reportedly publicly executed five Afghans for spying for the US.