The body of first Afghan President Mohammad Daud Khan has been identified three decades after he was killed in a Communist coup, officials say.

The discovery was made by members of a government-appointed commission during excavation at a military base outside the capital, Kabul.

Daud Khan overthrew the last king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, in 1973.

His death five years later ushered in a decade of Soviet occupation followed by the rise of the Taleban.