The Afghan Taliban killed a Supreme Court official, a dozen mine clearers and several national and foreign soldiers but also suffered heavy losses from intensifying violence ahead of the withdrawal of most international troops from Afghanistan over the next two weeks.
Today in Kabul a bomb ripped through a bus carrying soldiers, killing at least seven of them, mangling the vehicle and sending a column of black smoke over the capital.
"A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives at the door of a bus carrying army soldiers," said police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai.
Earlier gunmen shot dead senior Supreme Court official Atiqullah Raoufi as he left his home in the city.
The Taliban, ousted from power by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001, claimed responsibility, but did not say why it had killed him.
The hard-line Islamist insurgents run their own courts in parts of the country and consider the official judiciary to be corrupt.
Last night the Taliban detonated a roadside bomb near the US-run Bagram airfield, hitting a convoy of foreign troops and killing two coalition soldiers. A US defence official in Washington later confirmed the two soldiers killed were American.
The Bagram attack came two days after the US closed a prison that held foreign detainees on the airfield, which is in Parwan province, the only province adjacent to the capital that is usually relatively peaceful.
Heavily fortified Kabul has seen multiple attacks in recent weeks, including several on army buses and a suicide bomb that killed a German citizen in a French cultural centre during a performance of a play that denounced suicide attacks.
Fatalities and injuries among Afghan security forces and civilians peaked this year to the highest point since the US-led war began in 2001, as foreign forces rapidly withdrew most of their troops from the interior of mountainous nation.
About 5,000 Afghan police and soldiers have been killed, and more than 1,500 civilians were killed in the first half of the year. A contingent of about 13,000 foreign soldiers will remain in Afghanistan next year, down from a peak of more than 130,000.
Fighting has extended long beyond the traditional summer season, with the Afghan government also inflicting heavy casualties on the Taliban.
The army and police say they killed more than 50 militants nationwide in the past 48 hours.
The Taliban have been fighting a guerrilla war ever since their five-year regime was toppled.
They now have a strong presence in most of the provinces surrounding Kabul.
The latest violence follows a NATO air strike on Thursday that killed five people in the same province. Afghan officials said the casualties were civilians.
The coalition said it was investigating the allegations, but that they were identified from the air as militants before the "precision" strike.
