Taliban Armed Insurgency

Hours after the Taliban overran his hometown in northern Afghanistan last week, 17-year-old Abdullah was forced to ferry rocket-propelled grenades up a nearby hill- an unwilling and terrified insurgent recruit.

Heavily armed insurgents stormed a guesthouse in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul late on Tuesday night and were still resisting Afghan security forces more than five hours after the assault began.

Pakistan's indigenously-developed armed drone 'Burraq' has been tested in live combat against militants in the strategic Tirah Valley region of Khyber tribal district near Afghan border and killed senior commanders of the insurgents, according to a media report.

The US has controversially drawn a distinction between Afghanistan's Taliban and the Islamic State, and described the Taliban as "armed insurgency."

Afghanistan ended 2014 with a mixture of violence and hope today, as a Taliban attack was thwarted, a policeman gunned down his comrades and one of the country's leaders said he had convinced hundreds of insurgents to lay down their arms and support peace efforts.

A US soldier who fought off an "onslaught" of Afghan insurgents despite wounds to his arm and legs received the country's highest military honor Monday at a White House ceremony.

Dozens of armed insurgents attacked a convoy carrying a presidential security team in southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday, sparking a gun battle in which four guards were wounded, an official said.

Four suspected militants were killed on Friday as Pakistan's armed forces hit insurgent targets in a third day of action in a restive tribal area close to the Afghan border.

Hundreds of heavily armed Taliban insurgents attacked army checkpoints in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said, killing 21 soldiers in the deadliest single incident for the Afghan army in at least a year.

Taliban insurgents wearing police uniforms and armed with mortars attacked a prison holding hundreds of militants in northwest Pakistan on Monday and escaped with prisoners after a gunfight with security forces, officials said.

He took up arms after the Taliban killed his mother in a hail of bullets and inspired a local uprising that ousted the insurgents from his area. But Sayed Farhad Akbari, a 32-year-old construction company director, says he has refused to be co-opted into a government-sponsored police programme, branding the authorities corrupt and ineffectual.

A campaign of high-profile kidnappings has provided the Pakistani Taliban and its allies with new resources, arming insurgents with millions of dollars, threatening foreign aid programs and galvanizing a sophisticated network of jihadi and criminal gangs whose reach spans the country.

In the most direct assault since the American Embassy opened here nine years ago, heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests put the embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters in their cross hairs, showing the Taliban's ability to enter even the most heavily fortified districts in the country.

Hours after the Taliban overran his hometown in northern Afghanistan last week, 17-year-old Abdullah was forced to ferry rocket-propelled grenades up a nearby hill- an unwilling and terrified insurgent recruit.

Heavily armed insurgents stormed a guesthouse in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul late on Tuesday night and were still resisting Afghan security forces more than five hours after the assault began.

Pakistan's indigenously-developed armed drone 'Burraq' has been tested in live combat against militants in the strategic Tirah Valley region of Khyber tribal district near Afghan border and killed senior commanders of the insurgents, according to a media report.

The US has controversially drawn a distinction between Afghanistan's Taliban and the Islamic State, and described the Taliban as "armed insurgency."

Afghanistan ended 2014 with a mixture of violence and hope today, as a Taliban attack was thwarted, a policeman gunned down his comrades and one of the country's leaders said he had convinced hundreds of insurgents to lay down their arms and support peace efforts.

A US soldier who fought off an "onslaught" of Afghan insurgents despite wounds to his arm and legs received the country's highest military honor Monday at a White House ceremony.

Dozens of armed insurgents attacked a convoy carrying a presidential security team in southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday, sparking a gun battle in which four guards were wounded, an official said.

Four suspected militants were killed on Friday as Pakistan's armed forces hit insurgent targets in a third day of action in a restive tribal area close to the Afghan border.

Hundreds of heavily armed Taliban insurgents attacked army checkpoints in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said, killing 21 soldiers in the deadliest single incident for the Afghan army in at least a year.

Taliban insurgents wearing police uniforms and armed with mortars attacked a prison holding hundreds of militants in northwest Pakistan on Monday and escaped with prisoners after a gunfight with security forces, officials said.

He took up arms after the Taliban killed his mother in a hail of bullets and inspired a local uprising that ousted the insurgents from his area. But Sayed Farhad Akbari, a 32-year-old construction company director, says he has refused to be co-opted into a government-sponsored police programme, branding the authorities corrupt and ineffectual.

A campaign of high-profile kidnappings has provided the Pakistani Taliban and its allies with new resources, arming insurgents with millions of dollars, threatening foreign aid programs and galvanizing a sophisticated network of jihadi and criminal gangs whose reach spans the country.

In the most direct assault since the American Embassy opened here nine years ago, heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests put the embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters in their cross hairs, showing the Taliban's ability to enter even the most heavily fortified districts in the country.