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.

Hamid Karzai is the current President of Afghanistan, since December 7, 2004. He became a prominent political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Four soldiers with U.S.-led coalition forces and an Afghan civilian working for them were killed in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, the U.S. military said.
It said the coalition troops were on a patrol with Afghan security forces, but did not give any further details.
Some 38,000 U.S. troops are currently serving in Afghanistan alongside another 30,000 from 40 other mostly NATO nations.

Taleban insurgents in the troubled north-western Swat valley of Pakistan have announced an indefinite ceasefire.
The announcement follows a deal struck last week between a radical cleric and authorities that brings Sharia law in return for an end to the insurgency.
The Taleban have been assessing that deal and Tuesday’s move followed a meeting under the group’s leader in the region, Maulana Fazlullah.
The scenic valley of Swat has long been blighted by militant violence.

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: A senior Afghan Army general was killed Thursday in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan, and two British soldiers died in a blast in the south on Wednesday, officials said.
The general, Fazaludin Sayar, one of four regional commanders, was in charge of the entire west of the country.
His helicopter, an Mi-17, hit bad weather in the morning and went down in the Adraskan District of Herat Province, the Defense Ministry said. All 12 others aboard also were killed, it said. The helicopter had been headed to a neighboring province, …

Pakistani forces attacked militants in mountains near the Afghan border on Monday as fresh troops arrived after heavy fighting with Taliban insurgents, government officials said.
More than 600 al Qaeda-linked militants attacked a paramilitary force camp and two checkposts in the Mohmand region, to the north of the city of Peshawar, Saturday night killing six soldiers and wounding seven, the force said.
Security forces pushed back the militants, who had attacked from the direction of the Afghan border, killing 40 of them in hours of fighting, the paramilitary force said. There was …

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 …