Civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose by almost 30 percent in the first three months of 2013, a UN envoy has said, describing a recent Taliban attack on court staff as a "war crime". Jan Kubis, UN special representative for Afghanistan, said the "troubling" rise, compared to the same period last year, followed a 12 percent drop in civilian casualties over the whole of 2012. He told a NATO ministerial briefing in Brussels on Tuesday that 475 civilians were killed and 872 wounded from January to March.

A group of foreigners abducted by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan are well and have been moved to a "safe area" inside the country, a spokesman for the militants said Tuesday. The Taliban leadership will decide what to do with the group, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. Eight Turks, a Russian, a Kyrgyz man and an Afghan were seized after their helicopter made a forced landing on Sunday. "They have been moved to a safe area, they have no health problem and they are fine. They are inside Afghanistan," Mujahid said by phone from an undisclosed location.

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban have captured all aboard a helicopter that crashed in a volatile region of Afghanistan's east, a spokesman for the insurgency said on Monday. The helicopter, owned by air charter company Khorasan Cargo Airlines, made an emergency landing in Logar province late on Sunday due to bad weather, a Khorasan staff member said on condition of anonymity.

Taliban insurgents said Monday they were holding a group of foreigners taken captive after a helicopter made an emergency landing in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban, in a statement on their website, claimed they had taken 11 US military personnel. They "were captured alive and were then transferred to the most secure region of the nation", it said. The militants routinely make exaggerated claims and officials have said the foreigners were Turkish and Russian civilian workers and numbered up to nine.