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A car bomb exploded just outside the police headquarters of a southern Afghanistan city on Sunday, killing at least seven people, officials said.

The Taliban denied Wednesday that the movement is planning direct talks with the Afghan government to end the 10-year-old war, while a leaked NATO report suggested the insurgents are confident they will regain power after international troops leave.

France suspended its training operations in Afghanistan and threatened to withdraw its entire force from the country early after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French troops Friday and wounded 15 others.

The Taliban's political wing is ready to enter peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan, but the insurgents will in the meantime continue their armed struggle, the group said Thursday.

Taliban insurgents stormed a government building in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, setting off a firefight that killed 10 people, the Interior Ministry said, in the latest sign of insurgent strength after a decade of war.

You know the Taliban is feeling pretty good about life when it opens up a branch office. On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid announced that the insurgent group would be establishing a presence in Qatar's capital city of Doha to facilitate negotiations with the United States.

A decision by the Afghan Taliban to set up a liaison office in Qatar is the first concrete step in a decade by the militants toward a peace deal, but it shuts out a key negotiating partner — Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.
The United States' top diplomat for Asia arrived Tuesday in China on a tour that will also take him to South Korea and Japan to discuss developments in North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-il.

A roadside bomb blast killed five Polish soldiers in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, NATO and a Polish official said, in the deadliest single attack for the Polish military there.

The death toll from last week's rare sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan has risen to at least 80, the country's president said Sunday.

Taliban insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in the heart of the capital Tuesday while suicide bombers struck police buildings in an attack blitz that displayed the ability of militants to bring their fight to the doorsteps of Western power in Afghanistan.

The Taliban in Afghanistan insisted Wednesday that their leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was alive, saying a text message and Internet posting announcing his death were fake.

Pushing through a ring of his security men, President Hamid Karzai climbed into his slain half brother's freshly dug grave Wednesday and sobbed alongside the coffin at a funeral attended by thousands of mourners.

At least one suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Western-style hotel in Kabul late Tuesday night and Afghan police who rushed to the scene fought other assailants with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

A suicide car bomber attacked a health clinic in eastern Afghanistan as women and children lined up for maternity care and vaccinations, killing at least 35 people in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians this year.
"Before the negotiation phase, there should be trust-building between the sides, which has not started yet," Mujahid said.

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