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/ 4 May 2008

The boy who took Karzai’s bullet

Syed Ali was playing on the roof of his mud-brick house when the killers came for Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai last week. Karzai survived the attack on Kabul’s broad parade ground. Ten-year-old Syed Ali, a kilometre away watching his mother cleaning almond shells to supplement the family’s winter fuel, died, with two others, when he was hit by a stray bullet.

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/ 29 April 2008

Blast kills 15 Afghans in east of country

A suspected suicide bomber killed 15 Afghans and wounded 14 more in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan on Tuesday, a Nato spokesperson said. The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide attacks this year to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security.

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/ 17 February 2008

Picnic-site blast kills over 80 Afghans

A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said. The attack will add urgency to a debate about how the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies can help stem militant violence and promote stability.

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/ 12 February 2008

Senior Taliban commander caught in Pakistan

Pakistani security forces wounded and captured a prominent Taliban commander on Monday near the border area with Afghanistan. Mullah Mansour Dadullah took over as commander of Taliban forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand after his brother, Mullah Dadullah, was killed by British forces in May.

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/ 5 December 2007

Suicide bomber kills 13 in Kabul

A suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Afghan army personnel in Kabul on Wednesday, killing six military staff and seven civilians, a defence ministry source said. The bomber used a car in the attack, which happened during the morning rush hour on a road in the south-western part of the city.

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/ 24 November 2007

Six schoolchildren die in Kabul suicide blast

A suicide bomb on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday killed six schoolchildren and wounded three Italians working on an aid project building a bridge, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said. ”It was a suicide bomber … six schoolchildren coming out from school were killed,” said Zemarai Bashary.

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/ 18 November 2007

Afghan, Nato troops kill at least 12 Taliban

Afghan and Nato-led troops, backed by air power, killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and wounded another 15 in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday. Mostly Canadian Nato troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of the biggest southern city of Kandahar.

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/ 6 November 2007

Heavy toll in Afghanistan suicide attack

A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country’s history. Five members of the Afghan Parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise among the delegates and schoolchildren who were among the victims.

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/ 30 October 2007

Taliban causing Afghan aid crisis, says UN

The United Nations on Monday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year.

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/ 28 October 2007

US: 80 Taliban fighters killed

United States-led coalition and Afghan troops killed about 80 Taliban fighters in a six-hour battle following an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Sunday. Taliban fighters opened fire on Saturday with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades on the joint coalition and Afghan army patrol from a trench near Musa Qala in Helmand province.

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/ 10 September 2007

Twin suicide raids kill 26 in Afghan south

At least 26 people, many of them civilians, were killed on Monday in two simultaneous suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a provincial police official said. About 45 people were also wounded in the twin blasts that targeted a group of police in a shopping area of the Girishk district of the province.

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/ 1 September 2007

Taliban: S Korea paid over $20m ransom

South Korea paid Afghanistan’s Taliban more than -million to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said on Saturday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks. The freed hostages flew out of Afghanistan on Friday to Dubai en route for South Korea.

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/ 30 August 2007

Wanted Taliban leader killed in raid

A wanted Taliban insurgent leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Brother, was killed on Thursday in a United States-led raid in the southern province of Helmand, the Afghan Defence Ministry said, citing ground commanders. Brother served as a top military commander for the Taliban government until its removal from power in 2001.

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/ 30 August 2007

How to solve Afghanistan’s opium crisis

The United Nations reported on Monday that there had been a ”frightening” explosion in opium production in Afghanistan with Helmand province, where Britain has 7 000 troops deployed, leading the way. A record crop means that the country now accounts for 93% of the world’s supply and the situation is getting worse daily despite billions being spent to eradicate the trade since 2001.

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/ 29 August 2007

US: 100 insurgents killed in Afghan battle

More than 100 suspected insurgents were killed in a battle with United States-led troops in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Wednesday. The battle erupted after a convoy of Afghan and US coalition forces came under attack in the Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province, it said in a statement.