Kabul - Police arrested two suspects in the murder of a provincial female legislator and women's rights activist in southern Afghanistan while bomb blasts in the same region killed three policemen, officials said Thursday.

The arrests were made Wednesday in the murder of Sitara Achikzai, who was gunned down Sunday in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province, by four attackers, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Kabul  - NATO said Thursday that its forces killed six civilians in an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan while the military alliance's top commander in the country said that more efforts would be made to avoid such killings in the future.

Six people, including a woman and children, were killed and 14 were wounded in Monday's airstrike in Kunar province.

In its initial reporting of the incident, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the operation resulted in the deaths only of Taliban insurgents.

Kabul - More than 1,000 Afghans surrounded a group of 200 protesters who took to Kabul's streets Wednesday to protest a new family law that they said violates women's rights.

As police tried to keep the two groups apart, a man picked up a stone and threw it at a schoolgirl, shouting at her, "You dog of the Westerners, go from here."

Kabul, Apr 15 : Afghanistan has said its own security could be hurt by a deal between the Pakistan Government and the Taliban militants to impose Islamic law in the Sawt Valley.

President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation on Monday imposing sharia on Swat, a picturesque valley in northwest Pakistan, as part of a deal to end violence from the Taliban guerrillas.

Afghanistan, fighting its own insurgency against the Taliban, has long been worried that success by the Taliban in Pakistan could embolden the militants on both sides of the border.

Kabul - Taliban militants publicly executed a young couple for eloping in western Afghanistan, after the family of the young woman handed the pair over for Taliban justice. Gholam Dastagir Azaad, the provincial governor for western Nimruz province, said relatives had found the couple hiding in a house in Khash Rud district of the province after they eloped.

The family then delivered the couple to Taliban militants in Lokhi area, some 40 kilometres from the district centre.

Kabul - A female Canadian soldier serving with NATO forces was killed and four others were wounded by a roadside bomb in the volatile southern region, officials said Tuesday. Trooper Karine Blais was killed and four of her comrades were wounded when their armoured vehicle was blown up in Shah Walikot district of southern Kandahar province on Monday afternoon, the Canadian defence ministry said in a statement.