Afghanistan

Five policemen and a three-year-old child were killed this morning in Afghanistan when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Khost, close to the border with Pakistan.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A blast that shook Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar on Monday, was a controlled explosion carried out by the Afghan army, officials said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Taliban insurgents on Monday gave Afghan mobile phone operators three days to shut down their networks at night or face attack, as the rebels said international forces used the cellphones to track them down.

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) — Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said his country will consider beefing up its non-military support for Afghanistan’s embattled government while ruling out any increase in troops there. After a day of talks in Canberra with two visiting U.S. officials, Smith said Australia may be prepared to …

KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) — Seven Afghan employees of a local road construction company were killed when their vehicle hit mines Saturday morning in eastern Afghan province of Kunar, a police officer said.

The visit to Afghanistan by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer last week was meant to shore up confidence in the mission to stabilise the country and secure it once and for all from control of extremism in the form of the Taleban. Though Mr Jaap …

KABUL, Afghanistan: Clashes in southern Afghanistan in recent days have killed 32 militants, including two Taliban commanders, officials said. Separately, a remote-controlled roadside bomb hit a police convoy Thursday in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, killing a policeman and wounding four others, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein …

Australian troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul, but Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says he understands why Canada has set a withdrawal date for its forces. Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed overnight that Canada would withdraw its 2,500 troops from the volatile south of Afghanistan in 2011. The …

BRDO, Slovenia – The European Union expects to have fully deployed a police training mission to Afghanistan by April and could extend it later, the bloc’s special representative to the country said on Thursday.

OTTAWA – Canada’s minority Conservative government, bowing to a key opposition demand, said on Thursday its military mission in southern Afghanistan would end in 2011 and would not be extended.