KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Militants managed to penetrate one of the safest nooks of Kabul to detonate a massive car bomb Saturday, shaking the confidence of voters just five days before presidential elections.
The powerful blast, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, killed seven Afghan civilians and wounded 91 more. The bomb went off outside NATO headquarters just after 8:30 Saturday morning, the beginning of the Afghan workweek. It sent a plume of smoke visible around Kabul and knocked out glass windows more than 500 feet away.

After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
The …

U.S. President Barack Obama, in his first major military decision as commander-in-chief, has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to tackle an intensifying insurgency, the White House said on Tuesday.
But in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Obama also said military means alone would not solve the problem.
U.S. officials have said Washington and its allies are not winning in Afghanistan, more than seven years after toppling the Taliban for giving sanctuary to al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

A suicide car bomb killed four Afghan civilians and wounded 13 more in an attack outside a U.S. military base and the German embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday. A sewage tanker and several cars were burning at the scene and there were bloodstains on the road as police loaded the bodies of three dead civilians onto the back of a pick-up truck.
Fourteen wounded civilians were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.
Six U.S. troops were also wounded by the …

Kabul, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber struck U.S. troops patrolling on foot Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two soldiers and three civilians and wounding at least nine civilians, officials said.
The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province’s Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number.
Army Col. Jerry O’Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S. casualties occurred but said he could not give further details.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) — Taliban militants hanged one man and shot dead another in a restive Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border, after accusing them of spying for the United States, an official said Tuesday.
The body of local tribesman Shahjir Khan, 25, was found early Tuesday dumped in the central market of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal district, a security official told AFP.
A note found with Khan’s body said he had been hanged because he had spied on Taliban activities and passed information to the …

(AP) Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.
The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al Qaeda and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.
“You can’t …

KABUL, Afghanistan: A suicide car bomber plowed his Toyota into rush-hour traffic on a commercial boulevard in Kabul on Thursday morning, killing at least four civilians and wounding up to 17 , the police and hospital authorities said.
The bomber was apparently targeting a passing convoy of NATO troops, the Interior Ministry said in a statement, but several witnesses said there were no security forces, either Afghan or foreign, in the immediate vicinity of the blast.
The explosion occurred about 150 yards from a major traffic circle and a heavily-guarded entrance to …

Mullah Omar, the elusive leader of the anti-government Taliban, appears to have rejected an offer from Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, of protection in exchange for peace talks.
A Taliban spokesman rejected on Monday the offer of safe passage and reiterated that foreign troops had to leave before negotiations could start.
“As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren’t ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won’t bear fruit,” Mullah Brother, the purported deputy leader of the Taliban, told the Reuters news agency by satellite telephone from …

KAANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A U.S. coalition airstrike and clashes with the Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan earlier this week killed 37 civilians and 26 insurgents, according to an Afghan government report released Friday.
The report also accused the Taliban militants of seeking shelter near a wedding party in the Kandahar province’s Shah Wali Kot district shortly after ambushing a coalition patrol on Monday, according to the findings compiled by the governor of Kandahar province.