• Afghan villagers flee their homes, blame US drones

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Men peer through the former window of a destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, on March 19, 2013. Taliban militants attacked the nearby district headquarters in July 2011, then took refuge in the school. The Afghan National Army requested help from coalition forces, who responded with drones, fighter jets and rockets, leaving the school destroyed, according to village elders.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Ahmed Shah, 12, center, recalls the attack on his village in the yard of a house where he and his family found refuge in the village of Khalis, Nangarhar province, on March 20, 2013.

    By Kathy Gannon, The Associated Press

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Ghulam Rasool sits in the yard of his house in Khalis on March 20, 2013.

    Barely able to walk even with a cane, Ghulam Rasool says he padlocked his front door, handed over the keys and his three cows to a neighbor and fled his mountain home in the middle of the night to escape relentless airstrikes from U.S. drones targeting militants in a remote corner of Afghanistan.

    Rasool and other Afghan villagers have their own name for Predator drones. They call them benghai, which in the Pashto language means the "buzzing of flies." When they explain the noise, they scrunch their faces and try to make a sound that resembles an army of flies.

    "They are evil things that fly so high you don't see them but all the time you hear them," said Rasool, whose body is stooped and shrunken with age and his voice barely louder than a whisper. "Night and day we hear this sound and then the bombardment starts." Read the full story.

     

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Boys study in a makeshift school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Papers and schoolbooks lie among the debris of a destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Men walk through the debris of the destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

    Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

    Rahmat Gul / AP

    More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

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  • Prayers for Afghan girls killed by blast as they collected firewood

    Rahmat Gul / AP

    Prayers are said at the graves of children killed by a mine explosion in Chaparhar, in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, on Dec. 17, 2012. An exploding bomb or land mine killed ten young girls as they were gathering firewood outside their village in the east of the country.

    A blast killed 10 Afghan girls who were collecting firewood in eastern Afghanistan, according to government officials. In a separate incident, two Afghans died in an attack in Kabul. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports — A blast killed 10 Afghan girls Monday as they were collecting firewood in eastern Afghanistan, government officials said.

    It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion in volatile Nangarhar province. It could have been a bomb planted by Taliban insurgents or a landmine left over from decades of conflict.

    Slideshow: Nation at a crossroads

    Meanwhile, a truck full of explosives blew up when it hit the offices of a U.S.-based company in the capital, Kabul, killing one person and wounding at least 15, Kabul Police Chief Gen. Ayoub Salangi said. Read the full story.

    Musadeq Sadeq / AP

    Security personnel of the Contrack company stand at the scene of an explosion in Kabul on Dec. 17, 2012. A car bomb exploded outside a compound housing a U.S. military contractor in the Afghan capital Monday, blowing apart an exterior wall and wounding dozens inside, company representatives and police said.

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  • Two attacks in Afghanistan

    Rahmat Gul / AP

    Smoke rises from a burning convoy of NATO fuel tankers after it was attacked by militants in the Behsod district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Nov 14.

    Rahmat Gul / AP

    Afghans stand near the scene of an explosion in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 14. A bomb placed in a wheelbarrow exploded in the provincial capital of Jalalabad, killing at least one civilian and injuring nine other people, the Interior Ministry said.

    Read the full story here.