The Taliban have launched a series of coordinated attacks across the Afghan capital and at least three eastern provinces, targeting NATO bases, parliament and foreign embassies in a complex assault that shows the insurgents can still penetrate Afghan security and hit Western and government targets in the heart of Kabul.
A US soldier implicated in the massacre of 16 villagers in Afghanistan was expected to have his first meeting with his defence team on Monday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has lashed out at the United States for failing to cooperate fully with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers and questioned whether only the U.S. staff sergeant accused could have been involved.
A NATO helicopter has crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, Turkey's military and a senior Afghan police official said.
The United States has played down a call by Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a NATO pullout from Afghan villages, saying no change in the troop withdrawal timetable was in the works and no immediate pullout was being sought by Kabul.
NATO plans to boost anti-infiltration and other security measures after the January killing of four French soldiers by a rogue Afghan soldier, a NATO spokeswoman said on Wednesday with the alliance facing increasing protests in Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama says a deadly shooting rampage by a US soldier in Afghanistan is another reason for moving ahead with plans to withdraw American forces from that country.
The massacre of 16 villagers by a US soldier has triggered angry calls for an immediate American exit from Afghanistan as Washington tries to negotiate a long-term presence to keep the country from sliding into chaos again.
US officials are scrambling to contain the damage caused when an American soldier in Afghanistan wandered off base and allegedly gunned down more than a dozen villagers.
One or more American soldiers has shot dead 16 civilians, including nine children according to Afghan officials, in Afghanistan's south in what witnesses described as a deliberate massacre.
Six British soldiers have been killed when an explosion hit their armoured vehicle in southwestern Afghanistan, Britain's Ministry of Defence says. If was the biggest loss of life for British forces in the country since a plane crash in 2006.
Rescuers have shovelled through deep snow, searching for victims of an avalanche that destroyed a village of about 200 people in northeastern Afghanistan, authorities said.
An Afghan woman has been strangled to death, apparently by her husband, who was upset that she gave birth to a second daughter rather than the son he wanted, police say.
France has threatened to pull out early from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan after a rogue Afghan soldier opened fire on French soldiers, killing four and wounding about 15 others.
Avalanches have killed at least 29 people in Afghanistan's mountainous northeast as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said.
A suicide attack has killed dozens of Shi'ite Muslims at a crowded Kabul shrine, and four died in a smaller blast in a key northern city in the worst sectarian violence Afghanistan has seen since the fall of the Taliban.
Afghanistan's intelligence agency says it has thwarted a plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai after arresting a bodyguard and five people with links to the Haqqani network and al-Qaeda.
Gunmen killed eight policemen at checkpoint in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, while the United Nations said the average number of armed clashes, roadside bombings and other violence in the country each month is running 39 percent higher in 2011 than in last year.
A Taliban suicide bomber has killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan president and head of a council tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, in what analysts called a blow to peace efforts.
Writing recently in the Washington Post, Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser at the Rand Corporation think tank, claimed that the 9/11 attacks 10 years ago were not a strategic success for al Qaeda.
