Nine service members with the international coalition in Afghanistan died today when their helicopter crashed in the volatile south where troops are ramping up pressure on Taliban insurgents.

A string of militant attacks in Afghanistan have killed 12 police officers while six civilians died in bombings, authorities said today.

TALIBAN fighters will not wreck Afghanistan’s presidential election today, President Hamid Karzai said last night, after fighters clashed with police in the centre of Kabul and threatened to shut the country’s roads.

Nine people were killed in US missile strike on a Taliban-linked school in north-west Pakistan today.

US-led and Afghan troops battled suspected Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan in ground clashes and airstrikes that left over 100 militants dead, the coalition said.

Five suspected insurgents were killed when US-led forces and Afghan police shot at a convoy of vehicles speeding towards their checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, the US military said today.

A suicide attacker ran onto a police training field and blew himself up, killing up to 10 policemen and wounding dozens of others today in northern Afghanistan, officials said.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives next to Afghan soldiers in an eastern market today, killing one soldier and wounding three, an official said.

One Nato soldier was killed today in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

A number of Nato soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan, it was announced today.

A Nato airstrike killed 11 suspected Taliban militants hiding in a southern Afghan compound, an alliance spokesman said today.

Afghan forces aided by NATO aircraft and artillery killed 71 suspected Taliban militants in running battles in southern Afghanistan that also left five Afghan troops dead in one of the bloodiest clashes since the 2001 US-led invasion.

President Hamid Karzai condemned a US airstrike that Afghan officials claimed killed 10 border policemen today.

A Canadian soldier and 10 militants were killed today in fierce fighting near an opium-rich Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, the military said.

A ROADSIDE bomb killed four US soldiers and wounded three yesterday as they were patrolling in southern Afghanistan, the deadliest attack on American forces here in nearly two months, the US military said.

Afghan police and soldiers are pressing ahead with a plan to eradicate the world’s largest opium crop, moving from field to field in southern Kandahar province with shearers and large sticks as angry farmers look on.

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