By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writers
MARJAH, Afghanistan – Some American and Afghan troops say they're fighting the latest offensive in Afghanistan with a handicap — strict rules that routinely force them to hold their fire.
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By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD – The Taliban's top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents as U.S. troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.
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By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
BADULA QULP, Afghanistan – A day after the battle, the elders came to talk. Ten bearded Afghan men in robes and turbans sat on mats in the chill Monday to discuss their hopes and grievances with American and Afghan officers a day after a patrol of U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops fought insurgents in the fields and earthen compounds just north of the besieged Taliban town of Marjah.
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By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer
MARJAH, Afghanistan – Three more Afghan civilians were killed in the assault on a southern Taliban stronghold, NATO forces said Tuesday, highlighting the toll on the population from an offensive aimed at making them safer.
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Al Jazeera - Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, has lashed out at Nato and US forces for failing to adequately protect civilians in the battle against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the country.
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Al Jazeera - A suicide bomber who attacked a US base in Afghanistan killing eight people last week was an informant and not a double CIA-Jordanian intelligence agent, as had been previously reported, a Jordanian official told Al Jazeera.
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By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – An explosion tore through a group of children gathered around foreign soldiers visiting a U.S.-funded road project Wednesday, killing four kids and a policeman and wounding scores, including at least three American troops, officials said.
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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – The wife of the suspected Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan says her husband considered the United States as an adversary.
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KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday ordered parliament to suspend a winter break so that it can vet and vote on new cabinet nominees, after lawmakers rejected over two thirds of his original candidates.
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By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – A roadside bombing killed four U.S. service members, the first American combat deaths of the year in Afghanistan, while a British soldier died during a foot patrol elsewhere in the volatile south of the country, officials said Monday.
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By Emma Graham-Harrison
KABUL (Reuters Life!) – Afghanistan's first skateboarding park and school opened in Kabul on Tuesday with a boarding showdown between dozens of youngsters -- ranging from ministers' children to streetkids -- that it aims to bring together.
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By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD – The bodies kept surfacing — hanged, shot, beheaded — and always with a note alleging the victims were anti-Taliban spies. "Learn a lesson from the fate of this man," warned one message found on a corpse in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region.
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By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – U.S. Congressmen said Tuesday they are urging Afghan President Hamid Karzai to delay the next parliamentary ballot until electoral reforms are in place or risk American financial support for his government.
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By AMIR SHAH and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writers
KABUL – The head of a presidential delegation investigating the deaths of 10 people in a village in eastern Afghanistan said Wednesday the team has concluded that civilians — including schoolchildren — were killed in an attack by foreign troops last weekend, denying NATO reports that insurgents were the victims.
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By SYLVIA HUI, Associated Press Writer
LONDON – Britain's Queen Elizabeth II paid tribute to the country's troops fighting in Afghanistan in her annual Christmas speech broadcast Friday, praising their work while expressing her sadness at the casualties.
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