Taliban commander: War will go on until West leaves

The Taliban’s newly-named top field commander has used his first public statement today to warn that new recruits were volunteering as suicide bombers and that Taliban fighters would continue their holy war until Western powers leave Afghanistan.

Violence struck throughout the country with two bomb blasts that killed four people, including a Finnish soldier in the usually quiet north, while Nato said it attacked a meeting of Taliban leaders in the south, killing an unspecified number of militants.