The US-led Nato force in Afghanistan killed al-Qa'ida's second-highest leader in the country in an airstrike in eastern Kunar province, the coalition said today.

Nato forces have killed al-Qa'ida's second-highest ranking leader in Afghanistan in an air strike.

Television histories don't usually spend a lot of time establishing their presenter's credentials. Unless they've really gone populist and handed the job over to Richard Hammond, we're supposed to take it for granted that the person on screen actually knows what he or she is talking about.

The French president François Hollande continued his whirlwind introduction to office yesterday with a snap visit to Afghanistan to defend his early withdrawal of French troops.

French President Francois Hollande made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan today to visit some of the French troops he wants to pull out later this year, defending his plan for their early exit after meeting his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai.

Half of the major terrorist plots threatening Britain emerge from Afghanistan and Pakistan nearly 11 years after UK troops joined a US-led coalition to oust the Taliban, David Cameron said today.

President and British advisers acknowledge Afghans face tough future as West looks to open exit routes through Pakistan

President Barack Obama and Nato leaders expressed confidence in Afghanistan's ability to take the lead for its own security next year, as nations with a stake in the deeply unpopular war met today for talks aimed at paving the way for its end.

As if one insoluble problem were not enough, world leaders moved directly from discussing the woes of the eurozone at Camp David at the start of the weekend, to the equally intractable challenges of the Nato summit in Chicago at the end of it. Even without the thousands of protesters lining the streets, the meeting would not have been an easy one. And the issue at the top of the agenda is the most difficult of all: the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Hollande’s pledge to pull out troops early will dominate Chicago talks as UK bill is set to hit £20bn

Rockets crashed into a US base and a house Friday in a remote area of northeast Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, killing two Nato service members and three civilians, officials said.

The shooting of two UK soldiers by Afghan security personnel has led to tension and uncertainty. By Kim Sengupta in Lashkar Gah

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has begun hearing the case of Kahled El-Masri, a Lebanese-born German who was kidnapped, tortured and held for months in a CIA prison in Afghanistan in 2004.

A group of suicide bombers armed with explosive-laden vests, automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades stormed a government compound today in western Afghanistan, killing at least seven people, officials said.