A SENIOR adviser to Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been murdered along with an member of parliament visiting him at his Kabul home, a senior government official said yesterday.

Thirty-five Taliban fighters have been killed in a military operation in Afghanistan.

A US-led coalition airstrike in southern Afghanistan today killed a suspected midlevel Taliban commander and up to 15 other suspected militants, Nato said in a statement.

Afghan and coalition forces killed about 82 militants in multiple assaults across southern Afghanistan, the military said Saturday.

An 11,000-strong assault is to be launched on militants in the southern mountains of Afghanistan, the biggest offensive since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.