A Taliban suicide bomber attacked Afghanistan’s Information Ministry building in Kabul, killing five people and wounding more than 20. Ayaz Gul reports for VOA from Islamabad.
Witnesses are reported as saying that at least three militants stormed the ministry building in the center of the Afghan capital. One of them, they say, blew himself up while his companions opened fire on security guards before entering the building.

KABUL, Afghanistan: A suspected Taliban suicide bomber shot his way into the Ministry of Information and Culture in central Kabul on Thursday, then blew himself up, leaving at least two others dead and severely damaging a kindergarten in the building, officials and witnesses said.
The blast, which also wounded at least 21 people, set off a panicky scramble by parents working at the ministry to find their kindergartners, but only two appeared to be among the wounded, said Kabul’s police chief, General Muhammad Ayub Salangi, after he toured the scene.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s government summoned the U.S. ambassador on Wednesday to urge an immediate halt to missile strikes on suspected militant hide-outs near the Afghan border.
Missile strikes have killed at least two senior al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan, putting some pressure on extremist groups accused of planning attacks in Afghanistan — and perhaps terror strikes in the West.

A suicide bomber, disguised as a policeman, has killed an American soldier and wounded six other people at a police headquarters in northern Afghanistan.
Afghan officials said on Monday that a man wearing a police uniform blew himself inside the building.
General Abdul Rahman Sayed Kheil, a provincial police chief, said the bomber entered the police station while Afghan officials were meeting US soldiers advising a police training programme.

KABUL, – Turkey is willing to do more to train Afghanistan’s security forces, the Turkish foreign minister said, after calls from Afghan and U.S. leaders for help to build up the army and police in their fight with Taliban insurgents.
As violence reaches its worst level in Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled in 2001, NATO leaders recognise that strengthening the Afghan army, and particularly the notoriously corrupt police, is key to suppressing the insurgency.

KABUL) – Eight Afghan employees of a private road construction company were killed in international air strikes aimed at insurgents in central Afghanistan at the weekend, police said Monday.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan said it was investigating the claims, which surfaced on Sunday when local media reports said up to 23 guards of a private road construction company were killed in the strikes in Ghazni.
Ghazni police chief Mohammad Zaman told AFP on Monday that eight people had died in the action in the Qarabagh area.

KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan is tired of negative headlines, and he is on an offensive to counter what he sees as a wave of unwarranted pessimism in news reports coming out of the country.
U.S. Gen. David McKiernan’s public relations push comes at a time when more U.S. and NATO troops have died than in any other year since the 2001 U.S. invasion, in part because Taliban militants are launching increasingly complex and deadly attacks.