Afghanistan

CANBERRA (Reuters) – France on Wednesday asked its European allies to relax restrictions on troop deployment and operations in Afghanistan just a month after losing 10 soldiers in a Taliban ambush.

TEHRAN (FNA)- The fate of Iranian hostages in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to be pursued by a delegation from the Iranian Interior Ministry.

KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide bomber rammed a car into a United Nations convoy on Sunday as it drove through a market in southern Afghanistan, killing a driver and two local doctors, U.N. officials and police said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday NATO’s promise to extend membership to Georgia was unjust, humiliating and intolerable to Moscow.

The outgoing commander of US troops in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has said that he will never declare victory there.

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S.-led forces targeted Taliban fighters in eastern and southeast Afghanistan, including veteran commander Jalaluddin Haqqani’s network, killing several militants, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of a U.S. security firm in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Thursday, killing two people and wounding six, the provincial governor’s spokesman said.

KABUL (Reuters) – A bomb planted on a bicycle went off near the governor’s office in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni on Thursday, wounding seven people, an official said.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet has agreed to extend by 15 months the mandate for German troops patrolling off the coast of Lebanon to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the country.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Foreign forces in Afghanistan have killed or wounded 50 suspected Taliban militants in an air strike in the southern province of Uruzgan province, an Afghan police official said on Tuesday.