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KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan president's spokesman sternly rebuked American officials on Saturday, saying that the civilian casualties last week during an NATO-Afghan raid on Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan were unacceptable, not only because of the loss of innocent life but also because Afghan forces were not involved in the decision to call in an airstrike. Aimal Faizi, the spokesman, said American forces had made a ''unilateral'' decision to strike a home where Taliban fighters were hiding before dawn on Wednesday, while the Afghan forces were prepared to fight it out. Afghan officials have said 18 civilians were killed, and Mr. Faizi said it was the bombing that had killed women and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Four aid workers, including two women, who were abducted May 22 were freed early Saturday in a NATO rescue operation in northern Afghanistan, according to a NATO spokesman and a Swiss-based aid organization, Medair. Captured by insurgents while returning from a visit to a nutrition and hygiene project in the remote mountainous region of Badakhshan Province, the group included two Afghans who worked with the aid organization. The area is so remote that it can be reached only on horseback, and the four were riding back when they were abducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- Punctually, at 8 o'clock every evening, the cellphone signals disappear in this provincial capital. Under pressure from the Taliban, the major carriers turn off their signal towers, effectively severing most of the connections to the rest of the world. This now occurs in some portion of more than half the provinces in Afghanistan, and exemplifies the Taliban's new and more subtle ways of asserting themselves, even as NATO generals portray the insurgents as a diminished force less able to hold ground. The question is whether the Taliban need to hold territory as they once did in order to influence the population. Increasingly, it seems, the answer is no. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban have begun to send signals that they are interested in a negotiated settlement, potentially offering an opening for the West and the Afghan government, several Western officials said. While there have been some meetings between the Afghan government, NATO officials and some Taliban figures -- and even with someone who turned out to be a Taliban imposter -- the Taliban have always insisted that NATO troops would have to leave Afghanistan before any meaningful negotiations could take place. Now two recent statements suggest instead that they would be willing to engage in talks even with foreigners in the country. The Taliban are also speaking in less inflammatory terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. A NATO spokesman apologized for the child's death, which took place early Saturday in western Nangahar Province in the Hesarek District, a remote poppy-growing area close to Kabul Province and Logar Province. There has been almost no NATO presence there throughout the war, and the area is thought to be heavily penetrated by the Taliban. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- From the Taliban's hidden mud compounds to NATO's headquarters in Brussels and the Pentagon, combatants in a decade-long war are asking versions of the same question: How does Osama bin Laden's death change the struggle over who will control Afghanistan? For the Taliban, the jury is still out: they say their insurgency was never solely dependent on Bin Laden, and they could survive his demise, but the American raid that killed him has raised the possibility that even the movement's top leaders may not be safe in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

KABUL -- The Taliban announced that the insurgent group's spring fighting season would begin officially across Afghanistan on Sunday in an unusual news statement that aimed to project an image of strength and concern for civilians, even as NATO warned the public to expect insurgent efforts to launch a major attack. The United Nations special representative, Staffan de Mistura, meanwhile, said both sides should redouble their efforts to avoid killing civilians as the fighting is expected to ratchet up with the arrival of good weather. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was based for many years and where Al Qaeda helped to train and pay insurgents, there was relief and uncertainty about how his death would play out in the fraught regional power politics now shaping the war. While senior political figures welcomed the news of his death, they cautioned that it did not necessarily translate into an immediate military victory over the Taliban, and urged the United States and NATO not to use it as a reason to withdraw. ''The killing of Osama should not be seen as mission accomplished,'' said Hanif Atmar, a former interior minister who has been a strong opponent of the Taliban. ''Al Qaeda is much more than just Osama bin Laden.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The release of explicit photographs of American soldiers apparently engaged in atrocities against Afghan civilians threatens to ignite tensions between the Afghan and American governments and provide fodder for the Taliban's efforts to persuade Afghans that the foreign troops fighting here are a malevolent force. NATO officials and Western diplomats here have been steeling themselves for the release, worried that it will further undermine relations with President Hamid Karzai at a sensitive time when there have been several recent episodes of civilian casualties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A cousin of Afghanistan's president was killed Wednesday during a night raid by NATO and Afghan forces in which they detained the man's son as a suspected Taliban commander, as well as at least two of the family's bodyguards. The case brought the delicate issue of civilian casualties into the presidential palace and added to the already tense relationship between the Afghans and the Americans. It also raised questions about whether a member of the extended family of President Hamid Karzai might have Taliban ties, or whether bad intelligence led to a deadly raid on the home of an innocent family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- NATO airstrikes killed at least 35 people in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan last week in an attack that NATO officers say was a successful mission against Taliban insurgents, but that Afghan officials have condemned as causing mass civilian casualties. A joint NATO and Afghan assessment team will go to the area Monday to investigate the casualty allegations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LONDON -- Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that a British aid worker killed in an American rescue raid in Afghanistan last week may have been killed by a grenade detonated by a United States special forces unit -- not by a suicide bomber's vest from her Taliban captors, as the American command in Afghanistan suggested when it confirmed her death on Saturday. A grim-faced Mr. Cameron appeared at a news conference at 10 Downing Street to say he had learned of ''this deeply distressing development'' on Monday from the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who told him that an American-led review of the raid to rescue the aid worker, Linda Norgrove, ''has revealed evidence to indicate that Linda may not have died at the hands of her captors as originally believed.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A Taliban court had already scheduled the sentencing of a young Afghan aid worker named Attiqullah, when NATO forces raided the Taliban prison where he was being held in mid-August. ''Friday your trial will start, and it will be up to the judge what happens to you,'' Attiqullah, 22, recalled being told by his jailers, who were registering his name on a list of detainees to be tried. ''It is up to him if they sentence you to death or cut part of your body.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A Taliban leader in northern Afghanistan believed to have been involved in the kidnapping of a New York Times reporter as well as the intimidation of the local population was captured on Tuesday in Takhar Province. The Taliban commander, whom Maj. Sunset R. Belinsky, a NATO spokeswoman, declined to name, was known as a district leader in Chahar Darah, in Kunduz Province, which borders Takhar. The area has become increasingly unstable in the last several months with frequent reports of Taliban activities there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After intensive negotiations with NATO military commanders, the Afghan government on Wednesday approved a program to establish local defense forces that American military officials hope will help remote areas of the country thwart attacks by Taliban insurgents. Details of the plan are sketchy, but Americans had been promoting the force as a crucial stopgap to combat rising violence here and frustration with the slow pace of training permanent professional security forces -- the bottom-line condition for the American military to begin pulling back from an increasingly unpopular war. Many parts of Afghanistan have no soldiers or police officers on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a successful effort to win back a remote district from the Taliban, NATO helicopters dropped more than 200 Afghan commandos and a smaller number of American Special Operations troops into northeastern Afghanistan, NATO officers and Afghan officials close to the operation said Tuesday. A recent influx of insurgents, primarily Pakistani Taliban fighters, into the Barg-e-Matal District of Nuristan Province led to battles with Afghan forces during the past week and had raised fears that the insurgents were trying to establish a haven there after being forced out of Pakistan by Pakistani military operations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After five days of fighting, the Afghan border police, supported by American helicopters, repelled a force of Pakistani Taliban who appeared to have crossed the border to try to carve out a new haven in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, according to Afghan officials. Meanwhile, in Paktia Province in southeastern Afghanistan, the Taliban ambushed a joint force of Afghan National Police and NATO soldiers, killing at least five Afghan police officers, provincial police officials said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A NATO Osprey aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday night, killing three American service members and one civilian employee, according to NATO officials. The crash occurred near Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province, a desert area that remains under Taliban influence. And while NATO officials said the cause of the crash was not immediately known, the Taliban took credit for downing the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The second episode of civilian deaths within a week was under investigation Thursday by the Afghan government and NATO officials after reports that up to seven civilians had been killed in Helmand Province in a NATO missile strike. The latest episode, in Helmand, took place Wednesday afternoon on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, when NATO forces responded to a Taliban provocation and ended up killing a number of civilians. Neither NATO forces nor the Helmand governor's office gave a definitive number of dead, but reports from local people said that five to seven civilians had been killed, including three children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents. In a statement e-mailed to the news media, Mr. Karzai condemned the weekend attack and said the dead had been civilians, eight of them schoolboys. He called for an investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taliban militants fired rockets on a bazaar northeast of Kabul on Monday, near the site of a meeting between French soldiers and local tribal leaders, and police officials said 10 Afghan civilians were killed and 28 wounded. NATO troops reported that 4 civilians had been killed and 40 wounded. No troops were reported wounded or killed in the attack. Soldiers helped to ferry the wounded to local hospitals and to a nearby NATO base for medical care, a spokesman said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Afghan Defense Ministry and local officials in Badghis Province said on Saturday that seven members of the Afghan security forces had been killed in a NATO airstrike the day before that was part of an effort to aid a beleaguered Afghan and NATO operation against the Taliban. A NATO spokesman confirmed that the seven Afghan officers had been killed, as well as an Afghan civilian working with the Afghan forces. The organization is investigating whether its close air support was responsible for the casualties. According to NATO, five American soldiers were wounded in the operation against the militants, along with 15 Afghan soldiers, two Afghan police officers and one Afghan civilian working with the troops. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BRUSSELS -- The United States is helping senior Taliban leaders attend initial peace talks with the Afghan government in Kabul because military officials and diplomats want to take advantage of any possibility of political reconciliation, Obama administration and NATO officials said Thursday. Even as senior American officials cautioned that they were not yet ready to formally join a nascent peace effort with their Taliban foes of the past nine years, they acknowledged that the reconciliation effort was an important element in the American-led war in Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]