Washington, Jan 14 : US Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton told her confirmation hearing that fighting terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan would be the highest priority of the Obama Administration.

"It is imperative that we work with our friends in both Pakistan and Afghanistan" to defeat terrorists in that region, she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

New Delhi - Terrorism and regional security issues were to figure prominently in talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi Monday.

Karzai, who arrived in Delhi Sunday, was to express Afghanistan's condolences and solidarity with India over the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai in which more than 170 people were killed, a statement from Karzai's office said.

Kabul - US vice president-elect Joseph Biden travelled to a volatile southern province in his second day in war-shattered Afghanistan on Sunday and met with NATO troops amid increased attacks by Taliban-led insurgents in the region.

Accompanied by US Senator Lindsey Graham, Biden arrived on an unannounced trip to Kabul on Saturday and met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and General David McKiernan, commander of NATO-led international troops in Afghanistan.

On Sunday Biden made a trip under heavy guard to the volatile province of Kandahar and was briefed on activities of coalition forces in the south by Dutch Major General Mart C de Kruif, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's regional commander.

Kabul - Three soldiers with NATO-led international military forces were killed in southern Afghanistan on Friday, the alliance said in a statement.

The soldiers were part of the more than 50,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that has been deployed to Afghanistan from 41 nations following the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The statement did not disclose the nationalities of the dead soldiers, nor did it say how and exactly where in southern region they were killed. Most of the troops deployed to southern provinces are soldiers from the US, Canada, Britain, and the Netherlands.

Kabul- Six people including a senior police officer were killed in a suicide attack in a busy provincial market in western Afghanistan on Friday, the governor of the province said.

The bomber detonated his explosive-filled vest in a busy market in Zaranj, the provincial capital of the western province of Nimruz, when the deputy commander of the highway police forces was shopping, provincial Governor Gholam Dastigir Azaad.

Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children, in a US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the presidential palace said in a statement.

The US military said on Wednesday that their forces killed 32 Taliban insurgents, including an armed female militant, in an operation that targeted a roadside bomb-making network in Alishing district of Laghman province in eastern Afghanistan.