The Taliban has reportedly extended its deadline to execute a kidnapped Italian journalist. Reuters quotes purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayatullah Khan as saying the militants decided to extend the deadline to March 19 in order to give Rome more time to respond to their demands.

Senior Afghan officials say U.S.-led coalition soldiers accidentally killed five Afghan police officers in the troubled south.

The deputy police chief of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan says five of his officers were killed on March 15 in a shoot-out with NATO troops.

A huge blast at a gunpowder store in central Kabul destroyed shops and houses today, killing at least six people and wounding others.

Afghanistan and its Western backers are better prepared to face the insurgency in the country because militants are "under pressure from all sides," including from neighboring Pakistan, a U.S. official said.

A district police chief and at least 8 police officers were killed in western Afghanistan today when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.

Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said today his country will not be "blackmailed" by terrorists demanding the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan.

Italy's center-left government on Thursday won the first of two parliamentary votes that will allow it to keep troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a large photo of an Italian reporter kidnapped in Afghanistan was hung from Rome's city hall as hundreds gathered to call for his release.

Afghan police say three Islamic clerics were killed overnight by an explosion in the southeastern province of Khost, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported.