Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai, expressing horror at a suicide bombing here in the Afghan capital that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more, offered yesterday to meet with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to stop the carnage. Karzai spoke at an emotional news conference hours after an early-morning blast tore through a bus carrying soldiers to their posts. The explosion was so powerful that it ripped the roof and sides from the bus, scattering body parts and debris along a street in the city center.

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.

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 -- Insurgents yesterday blasted a U.N. convoy with a roadside bomb in the volatile southern city of Kandahar, killing five support workers and stirring fears that violence will further erode struggling aid efforts across Afghanistan. It was the deadliest attack aimed at U.N. staff in the country since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, world body officials said. Meanwhile, militants for the third straight day targeted Afghan security forces, with dozens of Taliban fighters staging a series of coordinated strikes on police posts less than 50 miles from the Afghan capital.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Three bombs, two of them carried by suicide attackers, exploded in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing four people and wounding at least 10, officials said. The attacks took place during a visit by a U.S. assistant secretary of state, Richard A. Boucher, to Kabul, where he met with members of the Cabinet. Boucher said the purpose was to discuss the strategic partnership between the United States and Afghanistan, which will include an increase in U.S. funding in the next year for the Afghan army and police forces.

Kabul, Afghanistan -- Each morning, the policewoman puts on her uniform, goes to her precinct office, sits behind a bare desk. And waits. She is one of several officers appointed to make it easier for women to report domestic violence. Her job ought to be one of the busiest in the district. Instead, Pushtoon, who goes by one name, has one of the loneliest. "Last week we had one woman. Before that there had not been anyone for several weeks," she said, twisting hands left scarred by her attempt at suicide years ago in a Taliban jail.

WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan topped the agenda at the recent NATO summit in Latvia. President Hamid Karzai faces many major challenges: weak governmental institutions, rampant corruption, lagging economic reconstruction, a booming drug trade, too many warlords, and a resurgent Taliban. Over time, with sufficient and sustained international support, and Afghanistan's own efforts, all these difficulties can be addressed - except for the Taliban. The Taliban pose a different type of threat. They can lose every firefight with superior NATO, U.S. and Afghan National Army forces and still turn southern and eastern Afghanistan into a "no development" zone and stir insecurity in Kabul and elsewhere.