Afghan Security Forces

National police hunting for a wounded insurgent commander mistakenly ambushed a vehicle carrying a member of the Afghan parliament, killing him and his son, provincial officials said Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation of the incident, which took place overnight in Baghlan province in Afghanistan's north. Taliban fighters and other insurgents have made significant inroads in the province over the last year. A new NATO supply route runs through the area, making it a magnet for militant strikes.

A suicide bomber killed at least 33 people at an army recruitment center in northern Afghanistan on Monday, underscoring the vulnerability of Afghan security forces as they struggle to assume more responsibility for safeguarding the country from Taliban insurgents. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, the insurgency's second strike on an army recruitment center in the city of Kunduz in 12 weeks. A suicide bombing at a different recruitment center Dec. 19 killed nine Afghan soldiers and police officers and injured a dozen other people.

Armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and an automatic rifle, a rogue Afghan soldier attacked a group of British troops early Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, killing three of the soldiers and wounding four others before escaping. The Afghan soldier was assigned to a patrol base shared by NATO troops and the Afghan National Army in the volatile southern province of Helmand, according to NATO spokespeople and Afghanistan's Defense Ministry. Helmand is where American troops mounted a large-scale offensive earlier this year to uproot Taliban insurgents from a stronghold in the town of Marjah.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan A U.S. Marine shot and killed an Afghan policeman who pointed a weapon at him on Saturday, Western military officials said. The incident took place at an outpost in the Sangin district of Helmand province, one of the most troubled enclaves in Afghanistan. Marines from Camp Pendleton took over command of the violent district in the autumn of 2010 from British forces, as part of a drive to expel Taliban fighters from their traditional heartland in Afghanistan's south.

A U.S. Marine shot and killed an Afghan policeman who pointed a weapon at him Saturday, Western military officials said. The incident took place at an outpost in the Sangin district of Helmand province, one of the most troubled enclaves in Afghanistan. Marines from Camp Pendleton took over command of the violent district from British forces last fall, as part of a drive to expel Taliban fighters from their traditional heartland in Afghanistan's south. The shooting pointed up tensions between the Western military and Afghan counterparts in a crucial phase of their partnership.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, tasked with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has dismantled three-quarters of its 800 bases and watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay. A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly “insider” attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Taliban fighters wearing suicide vests attacked a provincial capital Saturday, triggering gun battles that killed seven militants. The assault in Khowst began when at least six Taliban fighters carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades stormed the area around the main police station and a nearby government-run bank. All were shot and killed before they could detonate their suicide vests, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

  Imperial soldiers once patrolled its battlements. Treasure lay heaped in vaulted storerooms. Prisoners languished in its depths; princes plotted the course of empires. But by late in the last century, the mighty fortress overlooking this western Afghan city had fallen into ruin. Built on a plateau thought to have been a redoubt of Alexander the Great, the Citadel of Herat has been brought back to life. Reopened last month as a museum and cultural center after a painstaking refurbishment, the 15th century structure serves as a poignant reminder of past glories in a country beaten down by decades of war and deprivation.

One by one, each smartly uniformed member of the class stood at full attention, brandished a graduation certificate and uttered the ritual call-out: "I will serve Afghanistan!" But for the first time, the proud group of newly commissioned army officers was made up entirely of women. The 29 second lieutenants were the first female recruits to complete a 20-week officer-candidate program mentored by U.S. troops. Their graduation ceremony this week at a sprawling training facility on Kabul's eastern outskirts marked a milestone for Afghan security forces and spoke volumes about the complex interplay here of gender roles and security demands.