Turkey confirmed on Monday that eight of its nationals were abducted by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan after their helicopter made an emergency landing and said it was holding "intensive talks" with Kabul. "The Turkish embassy is holding intensive talks with Afghan authorities to find out their whereabouts," a foreign ministry diplomat told AFP. He said there was no information about their well-being.

Taliban insurgents have seized eight Turks and an Afghan from a civilian helicopter which made an emergency landing in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. The incident happened after the Turkish helicopter landed on Sunday evening, said Rais Khan Sadeq, deputy police chief of Logar province, south of Kabul. "Security forces found the helicopter but the nine people were not in it. They are taken by the Taliban," Sadeq told AFP. Revising earlier information, he said the group is made up of eight Turks and one Afghan.

By Amena Bakr and Hamid Shalizi DOHA/KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban leaders living in Qatar have held no Afghanistan peace talks with U.S. officials in the Gulf state for more than a year and see no prospect of any soon, Taliban sources say. A team of envoys from the Islamist insurgent group flew to Qatar in early 2012 to open talks with the U.S. government, which has laid a greater emphasis on negotiations before a handover of security to Afghan forces in 2014.

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have killed seven civilians with a roadside bomb and cut the throats of four Afghan soldiers kidnapped while travelling home on leave, officials said Wednesday. In other violence which has claimed a total of 23 lives over the past two days, two local Red Crescent employees were shot dead in what aid workers termed a "shocking" attack and 10 paramilitary bodyguards were killed. The civilians were travelling to the town of Shindand in the western province of Herat when their van was torn apart by the blast on Wednesday.