Three years after withdrawing, US Marines are returning to Afghanistan's Helmand province to help beat back a new Taliban offensive funded by a bumper opium harvest.
The US dropped its most powerful non-nuclear weapon, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, on an area of eastern Afghanistan said to be controlled by ISIS militants.
Pakistani authorities have illegally driven nearly 600,000 Afghan refugees back into Afghanistan since July 2016, with the complicity of the UN, Human Rights Watch charges.
The US commander in Afghanistan told lawmakers he needs several thousand more troops to break "a stalemate" with the Taliban and other insurgents.
According to the annual report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, civilian casualties in Afghanistan for 2016 reached a new record high since the US invasion of 2001.
The Afghan government controls less than 60% of the country's territory, with security forces retreating from many areas last year, a US oversight agency reports.
With Afghanistan's opium crop breaking all records, a three-way war is developing over the cultivation zones, as government forces, the Taliban and ISIS battle for control.
The local ISIS franchise claimed responsibility for a blast at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan's Balochistan region that killed 60 worshipers and injured more than 100.
ISIS militants opened fire on Hazara Shi'ite worshipers celebrating Ashura at shrines in Kabul and Balkh, leaving nearly 50 dead and scores more wounded.
Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled that relatives of the victims of a 2009 air-strike in Afghanistan are not entitled to compensation under international law.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan condemned an air-strike launched by an unmanned aerial vehicle that struck a civilian home, killing 15 and injuring 13, including a child.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has gone from being a CIA-approved Mujahedeen commander to an officially designated "global terrorist" to a partner with the US-backed Kabul regime.
