'Four dead' as Taliban attack Afghan army base

A member of the Afghan army who acted as a prayer leader for troops has shot dead a British soldier in the year's first insider attack, according to officials in the region.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban militants attacked an army outpost near the eastern border with Pakistan on Friday, killing 13 soldiers, the Defence Ministry said. The attack occurred in a volatile province that serves as a major gateway for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Hostilities have surged as weather improves, allowing easier passage through the mountainous area.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Several dozen militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a power grid station in northwestern Pakistan before dawn Tuesday, killing seven people and taking four hostage, police said. The attack on the outskirts of Peshawar city occurred at around 2 a.m., said the local police chief in the area, Granullah Khan. The militants first killed two people at the scene of the attack and took nine with them, he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan policewoman walked into a high-security compound in Kabul Monday and killed an American contractor with a single bullet to the chest, the first such shooting by a woman in a spate of insider attacks by Afghans against their foreign allies. Afghan officials who provided details identified the attacker as police Sgt. Nargas, a mother of four with a clean record. The shooting was outside the police headquarters in a walled compound which houses the governor’s office, courts and a prison in the heart of the capital.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Militants killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat, and an Afghan doctor in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan on Saturday. It was the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.

BOSTON (AP) — The bombs that blew up seconds apart at the finish line of one of the world's most storied races left the streets spattered with blood and glass, three dead, more than 140 wounded and maimed and gaping questions of who chose to attack at the Boston Marathon and why.

The Taliban believed Beyar Khan Weyaar was the perfect candidate to prepare an insider attack on Afghan police, but instead he set a daring trap that has given a rare insight into suicide bombing tactics.

Six medical students were killed and 23 others wounded in a suicide blast on Saturday at a Kabul military hospital, Afghanistan's defence ministry said."There was a suicide attack at a tent used as a dining facility by medical students inside the hospital," said ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi."The blast killed six people and wounded 23 others and all of them are medical students."The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.