US Congress war spend busts $1 trillion mark

Congress passed the $59 billion (£38bn) Bill on Tuesday after Republicans stripped it of cash for domestic stimulus programmes.

The new war spending pushes the total Congress has allotted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond $1 trillion (£640bn).

Mr Obama had called for a swift passage of the Bill - which includes more than $33.5bn (£22bn) for the additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan - and to pay for other Pentagon "operational expenses."

The signing took place just days after the unauthorised release of thousands of classified documents about the war that revealed the gulf between Western war propaganda and the brutal reality on the ground.The leak has intensified public debate over the increasingly bloody conflict.

The three US soldiers who died on Thursday brought the death toll this month to at least 63 and surpassed the previous month's record as the deadliest for US forces in the war, now in its ninth year.

The violence continued unabated on Friday across the country as British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to flush out or kill guerillas who have been attacking Nato and Afghan troops holed up in nearby Nad Ali and Marjah.

Nato has failed to solidify control of Marjah since 15,000 of its troops stormed into the agricultural community five months ago.

And, in Kabul, crowds threw stones and set fire to a jeep which was involved in a traffic accident in which two Afghan civilians were killed and two injured. The drivers, who fled the scene, were apparently Westerners.

Elsewhere, four Afghan civilians were killed and three injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Zabul province.

In Kandahar a candidate in September's parliamentary election escaped assassination when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded.

The Interior Ministry said a woman and a child were killed and another child was wounded in the blast.