Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber driving a taxi set off his explosives near a convoy of American civilian contractors and accompanying soldiers yesterday morning, killing himself and four bystanders, the Kabul police said. One of his intended targets was wounded. Within hours, U.S. soldiers fired into a crowd of Afghans near the scene of the blast, accidentally killing one man and wounding another, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. David A. Accetta. "It was an unfortunate incident, and we are investigating the cause of the accidental discharge of a weapon," he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Kabul yesterday for his second visit to the Afghan capital since becoming the Pentagon chief, saying that although he believes progress is being made in the country, he wants to ensure there is no slackening of effort. Gates first visited Afghanistan in January, just weeks into his tenure, after which he expressed guarded optimism, saying the situation on the ground was better than he had expected. Senior Defense Department officials familiar with Gates' thinking said he believes the situation has improved since then, despite a rise in violence in the restive south.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's last king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, died yesterday, plunging his battered country into mourning and inspiring a wave of wistful nostalgia for better days. He was 92. Zahir Shah, an ineffectual yet beloved monarch, spent nearly three decades in genteel exile after being ousted in a palace coup in 1973. He returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban, and although he played no significant political role, he served for many as an emblem of the country's yet-unrealized hopes for rebuilding.

NEW DELHI, India -- Three months after the Taliban movement appeared on the threshold of imposing its militant form of Islamic rule on the last parts of Afghanistan, a sharp reversal of fortune has seen Taliban forces taking heavy casualties and falling back in disarray to a battle front just north of the capital, Kabul.The front line between the Taliban and the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a more moderate Muslim leader long regarded as Afghanistan's wiliest military commander, now lies 10 to 15 miles north of Kabul at the nearest point.

SALANG PASS, Afghanistan -- After being stalled for months on the plateau north of Kabul, the forces of the militantly Islamic Taliban movement are again on the march across Afghanistan. Their objective this time is a breakthrough into northern flatlands beyond the peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains.With the white flags that symbolize their brand of Islam fluttering from their tanks, the Taliban have broken the impasse that settled in after they captured Kabul, the capital, in September. Now they are close to a gateway through the mountains that would open the northern plains to their advance.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Kite-flying has been banned.It is also illegal for the women of Kabul to wash clothes in streams or at pumps outside their family compounds."

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In this paradise of conspiracy theory, a country that has been the plaything of great powers for more than a century, a new rumor is making the rounds: that the United States is behind the stunning rise of the fundamentalist Taliban.From the Foreign Ministry to internationally funded charities, among United Nations officials and the clientele of Kabul's bazaars, many believe the Clinton administration is covertly supporting the Taliban, the victorious Islamic militia.

LONDON -- Charles Dickens' tale of life in this city and in Paris at the end of the 18th century opened with a line that endures because it is always true: ''It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.''The news of the day continues to make one wonder if anything has changed or ever does. The tale of one globe -- these times when we are supposed to be equal and neighbors because satellites above are beeping at all of us -- seems to have the same plot as Dickens' ''A Tale of Two Cities.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Early Friday, soldiers of the Taliban militia swept into Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. Leaders of the conquering band of Islamic fundamentalists promised the restoration of peace and order in Afghanistan after nearly 17 years of virtually uninterrupted warfare.But many in this war-battered city are consumed by fear that their latest ordeal is only beginning.For if the militia is to be judged by its deeds so far, its goal is to transform Afghanistan into a state even more fundamentalist and puritanical than neighboring Iran, into a country where women cannot bare even their eyes in the street and where television is outlawed on religious grounds.

CHARASYAD, Afghanistan -- The legend says a poor, pious man who lost an eye fighting foreign invaders had a startling vision: The Prophet Mohammed appeared and told him to act to staunch the seemingly endless bloodshed in this nation.Maulavi Mohammed Omar's revelation electrified boys and men studying in "madrassas," or religious schools, in the southeastern city of Kandahar. They were tired of 15 years of warfare and increasing lawlessness. In their first military engagement in August, they seized the Spinbolbak armory close to the Pakistani border.

KABUL, Afghanistan - - The thunderous explosion Saturday that targeted Western military headquarters in the heart of Kabul carried an ominous message aimed at ordinary Afghans just five days before national elections: Vote at your peril. The audacious suicide car bombing, which killed at least seven people and injured nearly 100, appeared designed to signal that insurgents can strike at will even in the capital's most tightly guarded districts. "The intent here is clear," said Aziz Rafiee, executive director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum.

KABUL, Afghanistan - -A powerful truck bomb on Thursday killed at least 25 people, more than half of them children, in an eastern province near Kabul. Authorities speculated that the explosives-laden vehicle was intended for an attack in the capital. Three American soldiers were killed by roadside bombs, the U.S. military said, two in southern Afghanistan and one in the east. The incidents followed a pattern of escalating violence in widely scattered areas of Afghanistan. The truck blast took place in Lowgar province.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gunmen riddled a humanitarian group's vehicle with bullets yesterday, killing three female aid workers and their Afghan driver, officials said. One of the dead was identified as an American. The bloody ambush in Logar province, southeast of the capital, Kabul, underscored the increasing dangers faced by those engaged in humanitarian and reconstruction work in war-ravaged Afghanistan. It was the worst attack of its kind involving foreigners in several years. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The car bomb that killed more than 40 people outside the Indian Embassy here yesterday stoked regional tensions and threatened to erode already diminishing confidence in the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry indirectly blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack, the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban movement in 2001. Nearly 150 people were injured in the bombing, an audacious strike in what previously had been considered a well-secured area of the Afghan capital.

TELEVISION THE D.C. SNIPER'S WIFE: A BARBARA KOPPLE FILM / / 9 p.m. Saturday. TruTV. ....................... Barbara Kopple, who twice won Academy Awards for socially conscious documentaries in Harlan County USA (1976) and American Dream (1990), takes viewers back to 2002 and the fear that gripped suburban Maryland and Virginia during a string of Beltway and Interstate killings. Her entree to the story is Mildred Muhammad, the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad. He, along with a young accomplice, was convicted of the serial killings.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A well-coordinated attempt by suspected Taliban insurgents to assassinate President Hamid Karzai at the Afghan national day military parade in central Kabul has turned into a moment of national embarrassment for his government, which has been pressing to take over responsibility for Kabul's security from foreign troops. Three people were killed yesterday in the brazen assault, ruining what was supposed to have been a proud moment for Afghan security forces. The ability of the attackers to get so close to Karzai, who escaped unhurt, suggested they had inside help.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's last king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, died yesterday, plunging his battered country into mourning and inspiring a wave of wistful nostalgia for better days. He was 92. Zahir Shah, an ineffectual yet beloved monarch, spent nearly three decades in genteel exile after being ousted in a palace coup in 1973. He returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban, and although he played no significant political role, he served for many as an emblem of the country's yet-unrealized hopes for rebuilding.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban claimed responsibility yesterday for the country's worst bombing since the group fell from power more than five years ago, raising fears of a major escalation in the use of tactics employed to deadly effect by the insurgency in Iraq. Thirty-five people, many of them police recruits, were killed when an explosion tore through a police academy bus in the Afghan capital during yesterday morning's rush hour. At least 35 people were injured. The blast could be heard miles away, and produced scenes of carnage more familiar in Baghdad than Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber driving a taxi set off his explosives near a convoy of American civilian contractors and accompanying soldiers yesterday morning, killing himself and four bystanders, the Kabul police said. One of his intended targets was wounded. Within hours, U.S. soldiers fired into a crowd of Afghans near the scene of the blast, accidentally killing one man and wounding another, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. David A. Accetta. "It was an unfortunate incident, and we are investigating the cause of the accidental discharge of a weapon," he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan journalist was shot dead by unknown gunmen in her home north of Kabul Tuesday night as she slept beside her 10-month-old baby, Afghan officials said yesterday. The journalist, Zakia Zaki, 38, was the director of a private local radio station in Jabal-us-Siraj, an hour's drive north of the capital, Kabul. She was shot seven times, said Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the governor of Parwan province. The baby survived. Zaki, the mother of six children, had been receiving threats for the past few months demanding that she take the station off the air, Taqwa said.