Afghanistan News

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan authorities are examining the extent of an unprecedented locust infestation that has prompted local officials in some areas to offer wheat as a reward to residents for killing the insects.

KABUL (AFP) – Two foreign soldiers were killed in action in Afghanistan on Friday, military forces said, while more than a dozen Taliban-linked rebels were killed in a separate battle involving air strikes.

As of Friday, May 9, 2008, at least 427 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures May 3 at 10 a.m. EDT.

KABUL (AFP) – Twelve people including three foreign soldiers were killed in a spate of bombings and gun battles in Afghanistan, including one firefight between police and opium growers, officials said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pentagon said Tuesday that any sizeable increase in much-needed US forces in Afghanistan will depend on deeper troop cuts in Iraq than currently planned.

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Jam Bigum, a drug addict in Afghanistan’s impoverished northern province of Badakhshan, feeds her three-month-old son opium three times a day to keep him quiet.

KABUL (AFP) – Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura met President Hamid Karzai during a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday in which he urged better relations with Pakistan.

KABUL (AFP) – Pakistan should stop “terrorists” from using its soil to attack Afghanistan if it makes deals with Taliban militants along the troubled border, the Afghan defence ministry said.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Hungry Afghans looking for their next meal eye bread scraps piled up like heaps of trash at a Kabul market as a vendor weighs out fistfuls of the stale crusts on a scale. A Pashtun woman waits with an empty plastic sack.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Eight Afghan civilians, three of them children, were killed in two landmine explosions near the border with Pakistan, a senior provincial police official said on Thursday.