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There are few formal street names or house numbers in Kabul - so just how does a postman deliver the mail? For the postmen of Kabul, navigating the maze of the city is a daunting task. It is a city of more than four million people and one in which hundreds of homes and streets are being developed every year. There are few street names and house numbers, and the Central Post Office has yet to introduce a full postal code system. There is often little information to work with So how does a letter find its way to the...

Gunfire, Possible Explosion at Kabul Building Believed to House CIA Gunfire and a possible explosion Sunday night rattled the building believed to house the CIA office in Kabul. It wasn’t clear if the incident took place inside the building or just outside the entrance. At least one helicopter has landed outside the building, according to local journalists. The building is in the single most secure part of Kabul and used to be known as the Arianna Hotel until 2002, when it was believed to have been taken over by the CIA. It is just a few feet from one of...

A complicated attack involving multiple gunmen and apparent suicide bombers was underway in the heart of the Afghan capital Tuesday morning, and it appeared to be focused near the U.S. Embassy. CBS News staff in Kabul reported hearing heavy gunfire and at least seven explosions, some of them large. The situation was described as "chaotic", and it remained unclear how many people were wounded. A Taliban spokesman claimed there were several militants inside at least one building near the embassy district in Kabul, and that the targets of the attack were Afghan government ministries and the intelligence services. The Taliban's...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Insurgents fired rockets and assault rifles in the direction of the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other official buildings Tuesday as gunfire and explosions rocked the heart of the Afghan capital. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The surge of violence was a stark reminder of the instability that continues to plague Afghanistan nearly a decade after the U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. Police said the gunmen were firing from a tall office building that is under construction at Kabul's Abdul...

NATO forces backed by helicopters were battling Friday with insurgents who killed at least 10 people, including a foreign soldier, in an assault on a British cultural center in the Afghan capital. At least five blasts, claimed by the Taliban, rocked the British Council offices in Kabul from the early hours of the morning, during a public holiday marking Afghanistan's independence from Britain in 1919. -excerpt- One soldier said he thought that the Britons inside the compound took refuge in a safe room, The (London) Times reported.

KABUL — Veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker can handle Islamist insurgencies, hostile heads of state and management of some of the world’s largest embassies. But what’s he going to do about the cats? The new leader of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has probably already walked past (and possibly petted?) Gordo, Freckles, Dusty, Ferdinand and Maria Teresa or any of the other 25 to 30 felines that populate the downtown diplomatic campus. But in case he has not been briefed on the bizarre battle over their fate (kill them! save them! fly them to Berkeley!), here are the basics. Somewhere...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A Defense Ministry official says a close adviser to the Afghan president and a member of parliament have been killed during an attack in the capital.

Until last week, Solaiman Faizi's biggest problems were making sure that guests at his newly opened hotel didn't burn the place down with their small propane stoves or overload the tenuous power supply. But after an unpleasant encounter with post-Taliban vengeance and justice, Faizi isn't so sure that he should have left New Jersey to help reopen his family's hotel in one of the world's most treacherous cities. One of his brothers is stewing in Kabul's central jail, recovering from a beating by soldiers. Another brother just got out of the hospital, where he says he was treated for a...

Last week, after a decade of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, President Obama announced a plan to begin withdrawing thousands of U.S. troops from the country this year. The war has been expensive -- a Brown University research project released Wednesday estimates the total cost of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at nearly $4 trillion (a figure that includes the ongoing cost of veterans' care). The human cost is more difficult to quantify, as more than 2,500 coalition troops (1,644 of them American) have now been killed, and civilian casualties are estimated at well over 100,000. Canadian combat...

The Kabul Intercontinental Hotel is under attack by gunmen with reports of at least ten deaths and suicide bombers on the roof of the hotel. Streets leading to the Intercontinental hotel were blocked. The hotel is situated on a hill overlooking the Afghan capital. The scene was dark as electricity was out at the hotel. Azizullah, an Afghan police officer who uses only one name, told an Associated Press reporter at the scene that at least one bomber entered the hotel and detonated a vest of explosives. Another police officer, who would not disclose his name, said there were at...

Just a headline for now. AP: The Taliban claim responsibility for the attack at the Intercontinental Hotel in telephone call to the AP. Gunshots heard from inside hotel.

Afghan Police: 6 Die in Kabul Supermarket Blast Associated Press January 28, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Police and eyewitnesses say at least six people were killed in an explosion that rocked a grocery store frequented by foreigners in Kabul. Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, chief of counterterrorism at the Ministry of Interior, says both Afghans and foreigners are among the dead in Friday's blast. He says police were still investigating what caused the blast. The explosion ignited a fire inside the store and mounds of canned goods and other merchandise were strewn across the floor of the smoke-filled building, making it...

KABUL - The Afghan government has accused several prominent private security companies, including some that work with the U.S. government, of committing "major offenses," a move that U.S. officials fear could hasten their departure from the country. A list compiled by Afghan officials cites 16 companies, including several American and British firms, for unspecified serious violations and seven others for having links to high-ranking Afghan officials, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. A decision to ban the major violators and those that have relationships with senior Afghan officials would affect firms that provide about 800 guards for...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indianapolis police said Friday morning that a 15-year-old boy from Afghanistan who has been missing since Thursday night was homesick and likely ran away. Authorities have been in contact with the U.S. State Department as the search for Mohammed Karim Azizi, 15, continues. Azizi, an exchange student who was staying with a host family in Forest, Ohio, was with a group of FFA students from his exchange school, Riverdale High School, visiting Indianapolis for the National FFA Convention. Indianapolis police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said Azizi has been in the U.S. for two months and comes from a large...

NATO has provided safe passage for top Taliban leaders to travel to Kabul for face-to-face negotiations with the U.S.-backed Afghan government, a senior alliance official said Wednesday. The official's account was the most detailed yet of the U.S. and NATO role in the clandestine talks, aimed at bringing an end to the 9-year-old war. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the subject publicly. The Afghan government has previously acknowledged that it has been involved in reconciliation talks with the Taliban with some NATO help. But discussions between the two sides have been...

Afghanistan has frozen the assets of leading shareholders and borrowers at Kabul Bank, the country's leading private bank, in the wake of the crisis sparked by the resignation of two high-level directors. Aimal Hashoor, the central bank's spokesman, said on Tuesday the Central Bank had ordered the assets of Sher Khan Farnood, Kabul Bank's former chairman, and Khalilullah Fruzi, the chief executive officer, to be frozen, together with those of several other shareholders and major borrowers. "This basically stops the sale of their assets until the situation becomes clear," Hashoor said. Last week, US media reported that the central bank...

BERLIN: A German held by American forces in Afghanistan has revealed details of planned terror attacks in Germany and other European countries, Der Spiegel weekly reported Saturday. The US believes that the detainee, a 36-year-old from Hamburg, is a "major source" of information on future attacks, the news magazine reported. Germany's foreign ministry has acknowledged that a German was being held by American forces in Afghanistan, but refused to give any more details. According to the magazine, the detainee, identified only as Ahmad S, was part of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. German authorities have been asking to be given...

As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan's biggest bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a major shareholder in beleaguered Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown. "America should do something," said Karzai in a telephone interview, suggesting that the U.S. Treasury Department guarantee the funds of Kabul Bank's clients, who number about a million and have more than a billion dollars on deposits with the bank. Kabul Bank handles salary payments for soldiers, police and teachers. It has scores of branches across Afghanistan and holds the accounts...

Afghanistan's largest gathering of clerics, who met to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban, has called for the revival of strict Islamic law as the country seeks ways to win militants away from a growing insurgency. About 350 of the Islamic clerics, or ulema, met for three days this week, the meeting ending with a declaration calling on President Hamid Karzai to enact sharia, or Islamic law, including punishments such as stonings, lashing, amputation and execution. "The lack of implementation of sharia hodud (punishment) has cast a negative impact on the peace process," said a 10-point resolution issued after the meeting....

KABUL, Afghanistan - At the end of his first full day as Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which included overview meetings with the commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, his three-star commanders, and a number of ISAF's staff sections, General David H. Petraeus decided to take a break and visit the Shahdarak Market in Kabul, Afghanistan. He walked from the ISAF Headquarters to the market, where he met with local businessmen, purchased and shared bread with the locals, and even found time for a little football match with a few local Afghan children. (ISAF Photo by...