Diaa Hadid

When Braden Chapman, newly patrolling with Australian special forces in Afghanistan, saw a fellow soldier shoot dead an unarmed Afghan man whose arms were raised, "I was taken aback," he recalls, "because I knew it was an execution."

The lone customer at the Simple Café in Kabul has high hopes for America's president-elect.

"Biden won't withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. He'll stay and fight the Taliban," says Sakina Hussaini, a 23-year-old arts student.

She gestures to the empty cafe; it used to be a popular hangout. Now, most people are staying home because of an uptick in deadly car bombings, gunfights and other attacks on civilians across the capital and the country.

Updated at 1:55 p.m. ET

Gunmen disguised as policemen stormed Kabul University in the Afghan capital in an hours-long assault on Monday, killing at least 19 people and wounding 22 more, including students who jumped out of windows to flee the attackers. It is the second attack on a learning center in Kabul in recent days, and comes amid a spike in violence across the country.

As the Taliban launched an offensive over the weekend to take areas of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, there were hundreds of casualties amid some of the most intense urban fighting since Afghan peace talks began last month.

Among the victims was a pregnant woman struck by a stray bullet. She survived but her fetus died in utero, apparently the result of the bullet's impact, Doctors Without Borders says.

After a suicide bomber struck a Kabul academy that prepares students for university entrance exams, one promising student briefly dropped out.

That was in 2018. Shamsia Alizada, the daughter of a coal miner, returned to school and now has topped Afghanistan's nation-wide university entrance exams, according to local media reports. According to Khaama news, which cites Abdul Qadir Khamoosh, the head of the National Examination Authority, more than 200,000 students sat for the exam this year.

Updated on Aug. 19 at 8:53 a.m. ET

To pave the way for historic peace talks, the Afghan government is freeing thousands of Taliban detainees in phases, including men accused of one the deadliest attack in nearly two decades of insurgency: a 2017 truck bombing in Kabul that killed more than 150 people.

The Taliban has declared a rare cease-fire in Afghanistan for a Muslim holiday this week, in a move that could renew momentum for talks with the Afghan government.

The negotiations are meant to end the decades-long conflict in Afghanistan and give the Taliban a role in governing the country.

In an online English statement on Tuesday, the Taliban said it will "halt offensive operations against enemy forces during the three days and nights" of Eid al-Adha, which begins Thursday.

When Talia Khattak's father was bundled out of his vehicle by men in plain clothes in November, she stayed quiet, fearing he'd be harmed by his abductors if she spoke out. Months later, his whereabouts still unknown, she realized her father, Idris, might never be released without a fight.

Abbas has worked in this Kabul cemetery for more than a decade, since he moved to the Afghan capital for work. He's sometimes called to dig quickly to bury the victims of militant attacks. But the last six weeks are the busiest he's ever seen.

"People bring their dead during the day and during the night," says Abbas, who like many Afghans, has only one name. He believes the cause of death is COVID-19.

Last week, Zain Tafneesh's family drove from hospital to hospital trying to find a bed for her 86-year-old grandfather. He had COVID-19 and was struggling to breathe. "We were helpless, we were begging," Tafneesh says. "Imagine that old man was in the car crying for oxygen, and the hospitals were showing no mercy."

In Afghanistan, a group of teenage girls are trying to build a mechanized, hand-operated ventilator for coronavirus patients, using a design from M.I.T. and parts from old Toyota Corollas.

It sounds like an impossible dream, but then again, the all-girls robotics team in question is called the "Afghan Dreamers." Living a country where two-thirds of adolescent girls cannot read or write, they're used to overcoming challenges.

Afghanistan is reeling after a spasm of violence Tuesday left dozens of civilians dead across the country — including an assault in Kabul, where gunmen stormed a hospital's maternity ward and left at least 16 people dead. Among the victims in the Afghan capital were newborns, their mothers and the nurses who had been supporting them both.

The attack in Kabul came within hours of another assault, this one more than 100 miles to the east in Nangarhar province, which left at least 24 people dead and dozens more injured after a suicide blast tore through a funeral.

In a video recently sent to journalists from an Afghan prison, an inmate leans against a blue wall, struggling to breathe. "What's wrong with him?" one man asks. "Corona," another says.

Videos showing Afghan prisoners suffering from COVID-19-like symptoms have angered the Taliban, which has thousands of loyalists in government lockups.

Last Friday, dozens of worshippers braved pelting rain — and defied the government — to gather for communal prayers at Hanifiya mosque in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. They ignored official orders to limit Friday congregations to just five people — part of a broader ban on public gatherings to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Many of the Friday congregants were elderly, like 72-year-old retiree Awal Khan, precisely the category of people who have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Dozens of worshippers milled outside the ornate Haidari Mosque in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, in violation of lockdown orders on a recent Friday in April. The muezzin called to prayer, but they couldn't enter.

"As you can see the administration has closed down the mosque," said Mohammad Zubair, a 28-year-old government servant.

After hours of pounding the pavement, plaintively warbling his flute, Mohammad Azem finally attracted a small crowd to watch his performing monkey dance to his music on an upscale Islamabad street.

A woman begging door-to-door and two security guards watched his monkey dance, the bells on his leash ringing as Azem pounded a little drum. Ending the show, the monkey saluted and placed a tin can on his head for change.

Peter Joseph says he does his best to keep his family safe during the coronavirus pandemic. They all wear masks. They use hand sanitizer when they can find a supply – it's in short supply across the Pakistani capital Islamabad, where they live.

Until last week, Ahsan Pirzada ran a law firm in the Pakistani capital. But on March 22, when businesses shut down across Islamabad and thousands of low-wage Pakistanis lost their jobs, he decided to act.

The first two cases of coronavirus infection in the Gaza Strip, a war-shattered territory with a fragile health system, were confirmed over the weekend in Palestinian men who attended a mass religious gathering 10 days ago in Pakistan, according to an Islamabad-based Palestinian diplomat.

Demonstrators belonging to Islamist groups attacked an International Women's Day rally in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, hurling rocks, chunks of mud and even their shoes. The demonstrators, who were at a rival rally held by hardline Islamist organizations, were particularly enraged by one slogan the women's day rally adopted: "mera jism, mera marzi" – "my body, my choice."

Updated at 8:57 a.m. ET

Afghan forces, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and the Taliban militia will begin a seven-day "reduction in violence" across the country beginning Saturday midnight local time (2:30 p.m. ET Friday) — a possible prelude to a broader peace deal following two decades of war, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

The quasi cease-fire was hammered out during protracted negotiations in Qatar that began in 2018. It could ultimately lead to a significant reduction of the approximately 12,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.