Afghanistan

KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's interior ministry said a Japanese national had been freed 10 hours after he was kidnapped Tuesday but his release was not confirmed by the aid worker's employer.

TOKYO (AFP) - The parents of a Japanese aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan made an emotional plea on Tuesday for their son, as Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said he was "extremely concerned" for his safety.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan police clashed with the kidnappers of a male Japanese aid worker in eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, freeing the man's local driver, a police spokesman said.

TOKYO - A Japanese aid worker was kidnapped at gunpoint with his driver in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, and a spokesman for the Taliban has claimed the group was involved, the government and news reports said.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan security forces were Tuesday battling suspected Taliban rebels to try to free a Japanese national kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan, police said.

LONDON (AFP) - NATO should not be able to use Russian routes to transit supplies and equipment to Afghanistan because Russia has suspended military co-operation with the Western alliance, the country's ambassador to Kabul argued in an interview published Tuesday.

KABUL (AFP) - The Afghan cabinet demanded Monday a renegotiation of agreements regulating the presence of international troops in Afghanistan after more than 90 civilians were killed in US-led air strikes.

CRAWFORD, Texas - The United States says it shares Afghan President Hamid Karzai's concerns about civilian casualties caused during fighting in that country and that an investigation is under way.

KARACHI (AFP) - Suspected militants in the Pakistani port city of Karachi torched two armoured vehicles destined for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, police said Monday.

PARIS (Reuters) - Overconfidence was probably a factor in the incident that led to the deaths of 10 French soldiers in an ambush in Afghanistan, the French commander in the region was quoted as saying on Monday.

KARACHI (Reuters) - Gunmen in the Pakistani port city of Karachi set fire to two armored personnel carriers (APCs) bound for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, police said on Monday.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents once derided as a ragtag rabble unable to match U.S. troops have transformed into a fighting force — one advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks and claim American lives at a record pace.

CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - The United States expressed regret Sunday for any civilian deaths from US-led military operations in Afghanistan, without confirming reports of nearly 90 killed in one incident this week.

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - An investigation has found that more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes days ago, an Afghan government minister told AFP Sunday.

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - An official investigation has found that more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes this week, the Afghan religious affairs minister said Sunday.

KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai fired Sunday the top army general for western Afghanistan and a commando commander after a military operation involving air strikes that he said had killed more than 89 civilians.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Scores of Afghan civilians who had gathered in a small village for the memorial ceremony of a militia commander were killed when U.S. and Afghan soldiers launched an attack in the middle of the night, officials and villagers said Saturday.

KABUL (Reuters) - A NATO-chartered helicopter crashed on Sunday in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan, causing some casualties, a spokesman for the alliance said.

CASTRES, France (AFP) - Castres residents paid their last respects Friday to eight of 10 French soldiers killed in an ambush in Afghanistan whose regiment is based in this southwestern French town.

PARIS - The death of 10 French soldiers in an ambush by insurgents in Afghanistan has stoked a cry at home for France to rethink its commitment to the seven-year mission led by the United States.

KABUL (AFP) - The United States is erecting billboards in Afghanistan offering hefty rewards for Osama bin Laden, Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and US Al-Qaeda member Adam Gadahn, the embassy said Saturday.

U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, says that it is clear that the Taliban increasingly is trying to create instability in the capital. "I'm certainly concerned about security in Kabul," he says.

PARIS - France's prime minister wants parliament to vote on whether to keep French forces in Afghanistan, his office said Friday, as a new poll showed most of his compatriots want the troops pulled out after 10 died in a vicious ambush.

CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - The White House on Friday reacted skeptically to the Afghan interior ministry's charge that a US-led strike in western Afghanistan had killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani troops Friday killed 21 militants, including two suicide attackers, in clashes near the Afghan border, a day after a bombing killed 64 people at an arms factory, officials said.

Some in Afghanistan blame Pakistan's government for rising violence, but others say nothing can stop the growing militancy

PARIS - A French patrol marches up a rocky and dusty Afghan mountain pass. Suddenly, Taliban insurgents open fire from front and back, setting off an hours-long gunfight — the deadliest for allied forces in Afghanistan in more than three years.

KABUL (AFP) - Britain is "utterly resolute" in supporting Afghanistan as it fights a Taliban-led insurgency and pursues democracy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a visit to Kabul Thursday.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - NATO on Thursday denied that Alliance warplanes mistakenly killed any of the 10 French troops who died in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

KABUL (AFP) - Britain is "utterly resolute" in supporting Afghanistan as it fights a Taliban-led insurgency and pursues democracy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a visit to Kabul Thursday.