* ISLAMABAD/RABAT - Afghan opposition commanders planned an offensive to capture the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif from the ruling Taliban, whose positions have been pounded by scorching US air raids.

US planes roared over the capital, Kabul, en route to drop their bombs on Taliban frontline positions just north of the city on day 33 of the war to punish the Taliban and flush out their guest, Osama bin Laden, the man blamed for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

* ISLAMABAD - Pakistan said it had asked Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to close immediately their consulate in the southern port city of Karachi in a further hardening of its stance toward the isolated militia.

* PARIS - Current outside efforts to help the anti-Taliban opposition in Afghanistan risk failure because they focus only on the ethnic minority Northern Alliance, Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf said.

* ISLAMABAD - US bombing in northern Afghanistan has killed 85 fighters of a Pakistan-based militant group allied with the ruling Taliban, a spokesman for the militant Harkat Jihad-i-Islami group says.

* QUETTA, Pakistan - Tribal leader Hamid Karzai, in Afghanistan on a mission to undermine the Taliban, calls for international aid to help rid his homeland of the foreign fighters who make up al Qaeda forces.

* DUSHANBE - Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance says it wants more money and humanitarian aid rather than more foreign soldiers on Afghan soil.

* ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has detained a second pro-Taliban Islamic party leader as it cracks down on radicals before a general strike called for this week, party officials said.

* OTTAWA - The Canadian government is to freeze assets of an additional 83 groups and individuals, on top of 27 named earlier, on suspicion that they are linked to violent groups, the Finance Ministry said.

* NEW YORK - The Iraqi government ran a secret camp to train Muslims from around the Middle East to attack targets in the United States and Europe, including training to hijack airliners, two Iraqi defectors said.

* ALMATY - Kazakhstan, concerned at any spillover of instability from Afghanistan into ex-Soviet Central Asia, is holding talks with the Pentagon on a possible role on airstrikes on the Taliban, Kazakh officials say. - Nampa-Reuters