Afghanistan

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Forty Taliban were killed in air strikes to take back a district of Afghanistan captured by Islamist rebels while a British soldier was killed in a separate clash, officials said Friday.

PERTH, Australia - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Pakistan needs to do more to prevent Taliban militants from launching attacks into Afghanistan from its territory.

LONDON (AFP) - A British army dog handler and his explosives sniffer dog have been killed in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence in London said Friday.

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that Pakistan needed to do more to help curb the flow of militants across its border into Afghanistan as the Taliban had increased terrorist activity.

KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents use a sophisticated media strategy to portray themselves as stronger than they are and undermine confidence in the government, a leading think-tank says.

KABUL (Reuters) - Abdul Wahid was asleep in England when he received a panicked phone call. "Buy a plane ticket and hurry to Kabul!" his brother's voice said.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration underscored its continued support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday despite fresh allegations from a former U.S. anti-drug official that Karzai is playing both sides of the effort to combat a raging drug business.

KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO's secretary general said Thursday that Pakistan must be involved in international attempts to end cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, calling for a regional approach to combatting Taliban violence.

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO will not enter Pakistan to hunt Taliban insurgents, but reserves the right to hit the militants there should they attack alliance troops across the border in Afghanistan, the alliance's chief said on Thursday.

KABUL (AFP) - The existence of extremist sanctuaries is unacceptable and Pakistan should be part of a "regional approach" to eliminating the global threat from terrorism, the NATO chief said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's former point man in the fight against the heroin trade in Afghanistan has accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of obstructing counter-narcotics efforts and protecting drug lords.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban have created a sophisticated media network to undermine support for the Afghan government, sending threats by text message and spreading the militia's views through songs available as ring tones, according to a report released Thursday.

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan soldiers killed "dozens" of militants, including foreigners, in a clash on a highway in southern Zabul province on Thursday, the defence ministry said.

KABUL (AFP) - Afghan troops killed at least 34 Taliban rebels in a firefight after the militants ambushed an army convoy in the south of the country on Thursday, a defence ministry spokesman said.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan and NATO forces killed at least 15 Taliban militants in an operation to retake control of a district the rebels captured three days ago, authorities said Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida's foreign fighters who have for years bedeviled Iraq are increasingly going to Afghanistan to fight instead, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States said Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, July 23, 2008, at least 488 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures July 19 at 10 a.m. EDT.

WASHINGTON - Top Pentagon leaders are expected to recommend soon that Defense Secretary Robert Gates order hundreds of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the next month or so, according to a senior military official.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday sought to play down the seriousness of growing violence in Afghanistan but declined to say the United States and NATO were winning their fight against Taliban insurgents.

KABUL, Afghanistan - As violence in Afghanistan escalates, the U.S. is responding by scrambling to get in more troops. But it's far from clear how the strategy will work in a vast, rugged land where hiding places are many and suspicion of foreign forces is deep.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - The Pakistani army Wednesday wound up an operation in a restive northwestern town near the Afghan border after clearing the area of Taliban forces, the military said.

LONDON (AFP) - A British soldier serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan was killed in fighting with insurgents, the Ministry of Defence in London said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain and President George W. Bush all agree on one thing -- more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan. But would they make much difference?

KABUL (AFP) - A NATO soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the fourth foreign trooper to be killed in four days, the alliance force said Wednesday, while a police chief died in a bomb blast in the country's east.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's security forces made a rare arrest of a senior Afghan Taliban commander near the southwestern city of Quetta on Saturday, Pakistani security officials and coalition forces in Afghanistan told Reuters.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US teams in charge of training security forces in Afghanistan are short of some 2,300 trainers to set up a national police force, team commander Major General Robert Cone said.

KABUL (AFP) - Thousands of ethnic Hazaras marched Tuesday in the Afghan capital and the central town of Bamiyan in a protest over a land dispute with nomads in which several people are said to have been killed.

KABUL (Reuters) - More than 10,000 ethnic Hazaras protested in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, calling for President Hamid Karzai to resign over killings of their kin by rival Kuchi nomads.

KABUL (Reuters) - Two French aid workers kidnapped in central Afghanistan last week are being held by a commander of a former armed faction, a Western radio broadcaster said on Tuesday.