Kabul  - Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing nine police officers and seized their weapons, police officials said.

The militants tossed hand grenades at the police post in Gerishk district of the southern Helmand province Thursday morning before shooting the policemen inside the post, said Kamaludin Khan, the deputy provincial police chief.

Washington, Mar. 26 : The United States is no mood to discontinue the Predator drone attacks in along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as it is busy in preparing a list of new targets for the strikes.

According to US officials, the list is being prepared as a part of the Obama Administration’s decision to revamp its strategy for the region.

Pakistan has repeatedly said that the drone attacks are proving counterproductive in the ‘war on terror’ as it has resulted in killing of several innocent people in the tribal region along the Afghanistan border.

Washington, Mar 26 : President Barack Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 17,000 troops in Afghanistan is part of a strategy to shift the centre of gravity in favour of the Americans.

The United States is taking unabashed ownership of the Afghan war after years cooperation with NATO and resentment over unequal burden sharing, the Washington Post reports.

Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan this year will bring the number of foreign troops there to nearly 90,000, more than two-thirds of them Americans.

Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan  - Next to the governor's palace in Tarin Kowt, hawkers spread their wares at Uruzgan province's largest bazaar.

While merchants sell food and clothing or offer services they are drinking tea and smoke in their small shops. No women, not even a single burqa, are in sight.

In Uruzgan, a conservative region even for southern Afghanistan's standards, locals are open about their sympathies for Taliban militants.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday named Peter W Galbraith, a US expert on arms control, as deputy chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan.

Galbraith will replace Christopher Alexander of Canada to work in war-torn Afghanistan, where NATO and non-NATO countries maintain 55,000 military personnel and the US has more than 10,000 troops to fight terrorism, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Moscow, Mar. 25 : Joining the international community's concern over the increasing extremism in Pakistan and its precarious political situation, Russia has said that peace can not be established in Afghanistan until Pakistan is stabilized.

Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Sergei Ivanov said that Moscow is `very much concerned' about the security of Pakistan's nuclear armaments.