Reuters

Still image from April 3, 2013 video footage shows damage at the site of an attack by Taliban suicide bombers at a courtroom in Farah province in western Afghanistan.

At least 54 people were killed and 90 others wounded Wednesday in an insurgent attack on a government compound in western Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters were facing trial, local officials said.

Nine insurgents with explosives strapped to their bodies stormed the compound in Farah province, bordering Iran, Reuters reported. Explosions were followed by protracted gun battles.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the dead were 35 civilians, 10 members of the Afghan Security Forces and the nine suicide attackers, Mohammad  Akram  Khpalwalk, governor of Farah province, said.

Most of the 90 to 95 people wounded were civilians, said Dr. Abdul Jabaar, the head of the hospital where victims were taken.

The attack was the deadliest single assault in the country since 2011.

President Hamid Karzai called the attack "genocide" against fellow Afghans and said a delegation would be sent Thursday to begin an investigation and to assist victims and their families.

"Once again, terrorists shed the blood of our innocent people who went as individuals to local institutions for their work in Farah province," Karzai said in a statement.

He pledged that the perpetrators would be accountable to the nation for the killings.

NBC News' Jamieson Lesko and Akbar Shinwari contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 3, 2013 11:21 AM EDT

Slideshow: Schoolgirl attacked by Taliban in Pakistan

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Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban for speaking out against Pakistani militants and promoting education for girls.

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The memoir of 15-year-old Pakistani student Malala Yousafzai will be published this fall, publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson announced Wednesday. The deal is reportedly worth about $3 million.

Titled "I Am Malala," the book will tell the story of the young advocate for women's education who was shot in the face at point-blank range by Taliban gunmen on Oct. 9 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

The bullet passed through her head, neck and stuck in her shoulder but miraculously spared her life.

Malala was treated in England following the attack, and last month she underwent skull reconstruction surgery.

"I hope the book will reach people around the world, so they realize how difficult it is for some children to get access to education," Malala said in a news release. "I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can't get education. I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right."

Having survived the cowardly attack, Malala became a symbol for peaceful protest. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon designated Nov. 10 as Malala Day in her honor. Malala now attends school in Birmingham.

Weidenfeld & Nicholson will publish the book in the United Kingdown and Little, Brown in the rest of the world.

The British newspaper The Guardian reported that the deal is worth 2 million British pounds or about $3 million, but the publisher would not confirm. 

In a fragment from the book released Wednesday, Malala writes:

I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday. It was Tuesday, October 9, 2012, not the best of days as it was the middle of school exams, though as a bookish girl I don't mind them as much as my friends do. We'd finished for the day and I was squashed between my friends and teachers on the benches of the open-back truck we use as a school bus. There were no windows, just thick plastic sheeting that flapped at the sides and was too yellowed and dusty to see out of, and a postage stamp of open sky at the back through which I caught a glimpse of a kite wheeling up and down. It was pink, my favorite color.

"This book will be a document to bravery, courage and vision," Arzu Tahsin, deputy publishing director at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, said in a statement. "Malala is so young to have experienced so much and I have no doubt that her story will be an inspiration to readers from all generations who believe in the right to education and the freedom to pursue it."

JALALABAD, Afghanistan  - Taliban suicide bombers killed at least five policemen in Afghanistan's restive east on Tuesday, officials said, in a three-hour attack that coincided with a visit to the country by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The pre-dawn attack on a police compound in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan's largest city, came as the country braces for the beginning of the spring fighting season in the 11th year of the war.

One attacker detonated an explosive-laden car at the entrance of the Afghan National Police compound in a bid to let other attackers inside, provincial police chief Amin Sharif said.

"Three suicide bombers triggered their explosive vests and five were shot dead," he told Reuters, adding that five policemen were killed and four wounded.

US shares same goals as Afghan leader Karzai, John Kerry says

Amin said the attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and light machineguns, sparking a three-hour battle with Afghan security forces. Six civilians were wounded.

Kerry was in Kabul to discuss transfer of security to the Afghan forces, as most U.S.-led NATO combat troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.

Rahmat Gul / AP

Afghan police and U.S. forces at the scene where eight suicide bombers attacked a police headquarters in Jalalabad on Tuesday.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message.

Mohammad Ismail / Reuters

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai speaks during the opening ceremony of the third year of the Afghanistan parliament in Kabul March 6, 2013.

KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai will travel to Qatar within days to discuss peace negotiations with the Taliban, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, as efforts intensify to find a negotiated solution to the twelve year war.

Karzai's trip to Qatar would represent the first time the Afghan president has discussed the Taliban peace process in Qatar, and comes after years of stalled discussions with the United States, Pakistan and the Taliban.

The announcement was made only hours after another thorny issue in the U.S.-Afghan relationship -- the transfer to Afghan control of the last group of prisoners at the Bagram military complex held by U.S. forces - appeared to be resolved. The Pentagon announced on Saturday that a deal had been clinched.

Karzai's Qatar trip was announced by Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai.

"President Karzai will discuss the peace process and the opening of a (Taliban) office for the purposes of conducting negotiations with Afghanistan," he said.

Karzai was expected to travel to Qatar within a week, a senior Afghan official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters.

The United States has said it would support setting up an office in the Gulf state where peace talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan could take place.

"We welcome and fully support President Karzai's visit to Qatar as a sign of improved relations between the two U.S. allies," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council. "The president and other world leaders continue to call on the Afghan armed opposition to join a political process."

TENSIONS FLARE

The announcement comes several weeks after Karzai delivered a fiery speech during the first visit to Afghanistan by new U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in which he accused Washington of holding peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar without him.

Karzai also accused the Taliban of colluding with America to keep foreign troops in the country, marking a fresh low point in the relationship between the Afghan president and his most powerful backer.

Mosazai confirmed the agreement reached on the transfer of detainees held at the military detention facility at Bagram in Parwan province north of Kabul.

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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The issue of detainees at Bagram had become another stress point in Karzai's relations with Washington. A ceremony formally transferring the last prisoners to Afghan custody collapsed two weeks ago after Karzai rejected part of the deal.

American forces control an area of the prison adjacent to the Bagram military complex, which holds several dozen Taliban fighters considered by the United States to pose the most severe threat.

Washington is concerned the Afghans may release some of these men when control of the prison is handed over.

That concern was reinforced during Karzai's outburst this month, in which he said the United States had been dragging its heels on prisoner transfers and said he would release those detainees that were "innocent".

Under the terms of agreement, all Afghans detained by forces of the U.S.-led coalition would now have to be handed over to Afghan control within 96 hours of capture, Mosazai said. Any decision to release them after that would be made only by the Afghan government.

The United States last year agreed to hand over responsibility for most of the more than 3,000 detainees at the prison to Afghanistan and held a transfer ceremony in September.

The Pakistani teen marked for death because she campaigned for girls' education went back to school Tuesday for the first time since a Taliban gunman shot her in the head five months ago, a family spokesperson said.

Malala Yousafzai is attending classes in Birmingham, England, and not her homeland, where the Taliban had vowed to make another attempt on her life.

Still, it was a sweet victory for a 15-year-old who endured multiple surgeries to reconstruct her skull and restore her hearing after she was shot on her way home from school Oct. 9.

"It’s what I dreamed," she said in a video released by the public relations firm that works with her family.

"I dream for all the children that they should go to their school because it’s their right…their basic right.”

She wore the school’s green uniform top over a long black skirt, her head covered in a dark scarf, with a pink backpack slung over her shoulder.

She joked about the overcast weather in Britain with her father, saying, “I wish I could see the sun.”

Malala was already a well-known activist in Pakistan when a militant stormed her school bus and opened fire, wounding her and two other girls and sparking international outrage.

Slideshow: Schoolgirl attacked by Taliban in Pakistan

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Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was shot by the Taliban for speaking out against Pakistani militants and promoting education for girls.

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The Taliban, which opposes education for girls, later said it wanted to punish her "Western thinking."

She said in the video that being able to go back to school was “the happiest moment.”

“Today I will hold my books, my bag and I will learn. I will talk to my friends and I will talk to my teacher,” she said.

“I want to learn how to bring change in this world.”

Her two wounded friends, whose injuries were less severe, are also back at school in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where they are protected by government guards, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

"Before I was a normal girl," Kainat Riaz, 16, told the paper. "Now I am afraid to go out and can't go anywhere freely."

Malala Press Office via AP

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban, with her father Ziauddin, as she attends her first day of school.

NBC Islamabad Bureau Chief Amna Nawaz contributed to this report

Related:

Malala, teen champion of girls' rights, nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Thousands rally in Karachi for Malala, 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by Taliban

'Spy of the West': Al-Qaida, Taliban struggle to justify attack on Pakistani teen

KABUL — In his opening statement released at the start of his first Afghanistan visit since being named defense secretary, Chuck Hagel reminded everyone, "We are still in a war." By the time his official visit ended, after a planned joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was cancelled over "security concerns," it was clear that war’s second front, the war of words, was as volatile as ever.

The press conference cancellation was announced hours after Karzai had gone on national television with another blast of criticism over the U.S. role here. He said the U.S. and the Taliban were "negotiating daily," and working in concert to ensure that coalition combat forces would remain in Afghanistan beyond the scheduled pullout in 2014. Karzai added that two deadly suicide attacks Saturday — one explosion in Kabul that Hagel actually heard from his safe location more than a mile away — were intended by the Taliban to show that U.S. and coalition forces would not be able to withdraw as planned.

"Categorically false," said the commander of coalition forces, U.S. General Joseph Dunford. A Taliban spokesman also rejected all of Karzai’s assertions unequivocally.

By Sunday night, Dunford was compelled to say the U.S. "does not have a broken relationship (with Karzai)," or a lack of trust. And Hagel told reporters that as a former politician himself he "can understand the kind of pressures national leaders are always under," and that the two countries will be able to move forward together.

Still, the dust-up over the busted joint press conference was evidence of the stubborn distance yet to be covered — and that seems in some ways to be widening — between an emerging new Afghanistan and the U.S., its chief protector and stakeholder.

One illustration of that distance — the cancellation on Saturday, even as Hagel began his round of briefings, of the planned handover to Afghan control of the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base. To the Karzai government the ceremony would be welcome evidence of his administration’s authority and autonomy.  But the ceremony was spiked and delayed at least temporarily when it was learned the U.S. would insist that detainees it considered high risk or high value would not be included in the prisoner releases Karzai has said are essential if reconciliation with the Taliban is to go forward.

Another example of the stubborn distance between the Karzai government and its primary benefactor — Karzai’s order that U.S. and coalition special forces withdraw from the Kabul suburb of Wardak because of unconfirmed allegations of attacks and abusive tactics employed against civilians. Karzai had announced a two-week deadline for compliance with his order; it’s now two weeks later, with no evidence those special forces have retreated as ordered.

And Karzai’s new allegation Sunday that the U.S. and the Taliban are "negotiating daily" — in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban have set up an office, and elsewhere — was denied by both parties but was a signal too that the Afghan leader feels the endgame might be played out in forums and in discussions in which he won’t be the controlling voice.

Despite unequivocal denials by both the U.S. and a Taliban spokesman that any negotiations are taking place, Karzai did not back off his remarks when he met privately with Hagel after their press conference was called off and replaced by a mere photo op.

"I told him it was not true ... that the U.S. unilaterally is not working with the Taliban to negotiate anything," Hagel later told reporters.

What would Karzai’s goal be in asserting the existence of a back-channel alliance between the U.S. and the Taliban?

"Political," a NATO official said, asking not to be identified. "I mean Karzai has always been a bit paranoid, and he’s got a control reflex that seems more apparent now, as he’s speaking to Afghans and to his legacy … but these comments about the U.S. and the Taliban might end up killing all possibilities for real negotiations. It’s difficult to see where (Karzai) is going."

But though the Karzai/Hagel press conference was scrapped, the two sides did issue final statements of continued solidarity.

"We talked about everything (in our private meeting)," Hagel said, "I told him that he could and should call me directly if there’s anything I can do to facilitate the resolution of any of these issues."

Karzai’s chief spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said that both Hagel and General Dunford had been responsive to President Karzai’s views. "They understand our concerns," Faizi said. "Hagel noted that both sides should learn from their mistakes."

Related:

Karzai accuses U.S. and Taliban of conspiring to keep troops in Afghanistan

Blast rocks Kabul during Hagel visit

US Ambassador: Afghanistan chapter not 'closed' yet

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents poisoned, then shot and killed 17 people as they slept at a local police post in eastern Afghanistan, one of two attacks in as many days targeting Afghan security forces, an official said Wednesday.

It's unclear how the militants were able to drug people inside the post before firing bullets into their incapacitated bodies Tuesday night, said Abdul Jamhe Jamhe, a government official in Ghazni province.

Ten members of the Afghan Local Police, a village-level defense force backed by the U.S. military and Afghan government, and seven of their civilian friends died in the attack, said Provincial Gov. Musa Khan Akbarzada. He said there was a conspiracy of some sort but declined to confirm if poison was involved.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in Andar district. He told The Associated Press by telephone that the attackers fatally shot the men in their sleep, but denied they had been poisoned.

Residents of Andar took up arms last spring and chased out insurgents. The villagers don't readily embrace any outside authority, be it the Taliban, the Afghan government or the U.S.-led NATO military coalition.

The lightly trained village defense force, which is overseen by the Interior Ministry, is tasked with helping bring security to remote areas. But President Hamid Karzai has expressed concern that without careful vetting, the program could end up arming local troublemakers, strongmen or criminals.

In other violence, a suicide bomber slid under a bus full of Afghan soldiers and blew himself up in Kabul, wounding 10 in an attack that underscored the insurgency's ability to attack in the heavily guarded capital. Kabul police said at least six soldiers and four civilians were wounded. The suicide attacker died.

The bomber, wearing a black overcoat, approached the bus purposefully in heavy morning snow as soldiers were boarding, set down his umbrella and went under the chassis as if to fix something, according to a witness. Watching from across the street, office worker Ahmad Shakib said he thought for a moment the man might have been a mechanic.

"I thought to myself, what is this crazy man doing? And then there was a blast and flames," that engulfed the undercarriage, he said. "It was a very loud explosion. I still cannot really hear."

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan National Army soldiers investigate the scene following a suicide attack against a bus carrying Afghan army personnel in Kabul on Wednesday. The attacker was intercepted but still detonated his explosives and injured at least six.

Bakery owner Mirza Khan said the blast shattered the windows of his nearby shop where people were waiting to buy bread, leaving six wounded.

The Afghan government uses buses to ferry soldiers, police and office workers into the city center on regular routes for work, and the vehicles have been a common target for insurgents.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, also claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing.

The attack occurred three days after a would-be car bomber was shot dead by police in downtown Kabul. That assailant was driving a vehicle packed with explosives and officials said he appeared to be targeting an intelligence agency office.

It also comes as the U.S.-led military coalition in the country is backing off from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.

Some 100,000 international troops are helping secure Afghanistan at the moment, but most, including many of the 66,000 Americans, are expected to finish their withdrawal by the end of 2014.

Also on Wednesday, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss abuse allegations against American special forces and Afghan troops linked to them in the strategic eastern Wardak province.

The allegations led Karzai to issue an order on Sunday calling for U.S. special forces to be expelled from the province within two weeks despite fears that the move would leave the restive area and the neighboring Afghan capital more vulnerable to al-Qaida and other insurgents.

Karzai and Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of all U.S. and allied forces, discussed the issue and agreed to work together to address the security concerns of the people of Wardak, a coalition statement said.

Related:

Afghan president orders US forces out of key province

10 Afghan police officers killed in suicide attack