A top Afghan election watchdog official on Friday denounced political pressure from government and legal circles aimed at preventing candidates being disqualified after September's Parliamentary vote.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government came under withering attackon Friday , accused of trying to manipulate parliamentary election results by the political opposition and a senior vote official.

Coalition forces report that five village elders were killed in northern Afghanistan when insurgents attacked their vehicle.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is reaffirming his opposition to night raids that coalition forces are conducting to capture and kill midlevel Taliban insurgents. In a press conference on Tuesday,

Two remote-controlled bombs attached to bicycles exploded one after the other on Saturday in different parts of a city in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least three people and wounding more than two

Six heavily armoured vehicles were destroyed on Monday when rocket fire blew up a fuel tank at a Nato base in eastern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force said.

The Taliban on Saturday launched a pre-dawn attack on a Nato base while eight people, including six civilians, died in a separate motorcycle bombing, the latest deadly violence in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is not hiding inside Afghanistan, said the Afghan cabinet minister.

Fifteen insurgents were killed and 13 others captured during a joint operation by Afghan and Nato forces in the southern Kandahar province, an Afghan official said on Monday.

Insurgents armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, tried to storm a combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, setting off a battle that killed 30 attackers and wounded five