Kabul, Sept. 8 : Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has blamed Britain for the resurgence of the Taliban and its growing activity in large tracts of his country.

Interacting with a group of Afghan MPs, Karzai said that he and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had a row over warlords and drugs barons.

According to The Times, Karzai claims Brown threatened to withdraw British troops from southern Helmand province, if Karzai took the step of reappointing two provincial governors sacked for alleged dealings in the heroin trade.

Kabul - Afghan and coalition forces killed at least two dozen Taliban in clashes and airstrike in eastern and southern regions, officials claimed Sunday.

Twelve Taliban militants were killed in a US-led coalition airstrike in Sabari district of south-eastern province of Khost on Saturday, Arsala Jamal, provincial governor said.

He said the combined forces targeted a compound where they had intelligence information that militants had gathered.

Kabul - An Afghan provincial governor for eastern Nuristan province died along with his two bodyguards when their car swerved off the road and plunged into a ravine en route to Kabul, a provincial official said Saturday.

Governor Hazrat-ul-din Noor, 50, was on his way from the capital of Nuristan for a meeting in Kabul city scheduled on Saturday when the accident took place in Sarobi, some 50 kilometres east of the capital city, Haleem Nuristani, deputy provincial governor said.

Noor, who served as a mujahideen commander against the Soviet invasion in 1980s, replaced Tamim Nuristani in July as governor for the province, which is located close to the border with Pakistan.

Kabul - An earthquake shook the Afghan capital and other cities in northern parts of the country Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

According to the US Geological Survey, the quake's magnitude was 5.6 and the epicentre was at a depth of 177 kilometres.

The quake hit the Hindu Kush mountainous region, about 275 kilometres north of Kabul and 66 kilometres from Faizabad, the capital city for northern Badakhshan province, the survey said in its website.

Kabul- A US military raid in western Afghanistan left two civilians and eight militants dead, while coalition forces killed several militants and detained 11 others elsewhere in the country, officials said Friday.

Afghan and US military forces raided a house in Bakwa district of the western province of Farah on Thursday night, sparking a four-hour gunbattle that killed eight Taliban militants and two civilians, Gholam Farouq Nahimi, an army commander in western region, said.

Kabul, Sept. 4 : The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) rejected on Thursday recent media reports that the ISAF conducted operations in Pakistan.

Describing the reports as "completely false", an ISAF spokesman said in a statement: "The ISAF mission is to assist Afghanistan in providing a secure and stable environment to help Afghans rebuild their country and ISAF only operates in Afghanistan."