Sardar Ahmad

Afghanistan says its regained control of Kabul, killing all the Taliban militants who launched one of the biggest attacks on the city in a decade.

Afghanistan's election body has cleared the table by throwing nine lawmakers out of Parliament in a bid to settle a year of disputes over elections.

A wave of Afghan suicide attacks with civilian casualties shows that insurgents waging a war now in its tenth year are resorting to "soft" targets.

Concerns were growing on Monday about intimidation and fraud in Afghanistan's parliamentary election.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of Afghanistan's Taliban militia, on Wednesday rejected a call from President Hamid Karzai for peace talks.

Former presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah accused Hamid Karzai on Wednesday of lacking a mandate to deliver on pledges of unity and reform.

Incumbent Hamid Karzai is running neck and neck with his main rival in the fraud-tainted race for the Afghan presidency.

Living in Afghanistan, the world's unrivalled producer of heroin, Faqirullah has no problem finding drugs to feed his habit. What concerns him is getting the cash to buy them. No matter how difficult, the 27-year-old says he has to find the equivalent of $4 to $6 for his daily fix. Faqirullah, who goes by a single name, is one of a growing number of Afghan drug addicts.

Nato and United States-led troops backed up by warplanes said on Wednesday they had killed nearly 170 Taliban in two major battles in southern Afghanistan, while a US-led coalition soldier also died. The heaviest of the fighting with the Islamic insurgents erupted on Tuesday in the volatile southern province of Helmand.

A suicide attacker rammed an explosives-filled car into a United States embassy convoy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday, wounding five embassy staff and guards and at least three passers-by, officials said. The fiery attack was the first suicide bombing inside Kabul this year after several deadly blasts last year blamed on Taliban insurgents.

Hainuallah's days in a destitute border village in Pakistan all seemed exactly the same: a trip to the madrasa (religious school), the return home, dinner, and then creeping into bed. Then one day, a preacher told him about a way out of the boredom -- a sure ticket to a paradise filled with milk and honey running under fruit-laden trees.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded area of the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least 12 people and wounding scores in the latest in a series of such attacks on Kabul. It was not immediately clear who carried out the morning rush-hour attack, but similar strikes have been claimed by the extremist Taliban movement waging a deadly insurgency.