Afghanistan–Pakistan relations

The founder of Afghanistan's much-feared Haqqani network, a former U.S. ally turned fierce enemy, has died after years of ill health, a Taliban spokesman said Tuesday. Jalaluddin Haqqani was 72.

About 150 people are reported to have been kidnapped after Taliban militants launched an ambush on three buses in northern Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman said they were targeting security forces travelling on the buses, adding the civilians would be released.

It comes a day after the government offered a conditional ceasefire.

The Pakistani Taliban on Wednesday claimed responsibility for an overnight suicide bombing at a campaign rally that killed a secular politician and 20 others, two weeks before the country's nationwide elections.

The U.S. military said on June 14 it carried out a strike targeting a senior militant leader in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, where Pakistani Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah is believed to be hiding.

Seven Afghan migrants, including three children, died when a fiber boat carrying them sank off the western Çanakkale province early on May 15, according to a security source.

An explosion hit the Afghan capital of Kabul during the morning rush hour on Monday, reports Reuters.

The explosion, in the Shashdarak area close to buildings of the NDS intelligence service, came a week after a blast killed 60 people at a voter registration center in the west of the city. 

Taliban militants launched a pre-dawn raid on a district government compound in Afghanistan on April 12, killing at least seven people including the local governor, officials said.

Nearly 20,000 undocumented Afghan migrants have arrived in Turkey over the past three months, an unprecedented number according to the latest figures from the General Directorate of Security.

National Defence Minister Mihai Fifor together with Chief of the Romanian Army Staff Nicolae Ciuca on Thursday attended a homecoming ceremony for the 280th Brave Hearts Infantry Battalion returning from Afghanistan.

A German national believed to be a military advisor to the Taliban in Afghanistan has been arrested in the insurgency-racked province of Helmand, officials told AFP late on Feb. 28.