By Zhang Yunlong

    KABUL, July 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-led Coalition forces have killed on Monday 33 militants in eastern Afghan province Khost as the eastern region bordering Pakistan has increasingly been the scene of Taliban-led militancy, the military alliance said on Tuesday.

    Attack helicopters and a bomber were used after a Coalition aerial reconnaissance team located the militants armed with heavy machine-guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), the U.S.-led military said in a brief statement issued from Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul.

    This fresh raid brought the number of casualties on the part ofanti-government elements beyond 200 since Afghan and NATO-led forces drove hundreds of militants out of Arghandab district, Kandahar province in the south, two weeks ago.

    Reports of huge insurgents' fatalities appeared over the days as the war-torn nation has witnessed a shocking surge of militancy in forms of improvised explosive device blasts and organized attacks during the past month.

    NATO forces in an air strike killed 15 militants Sunday night in Dasht-e-Bakwa district of southwestern province Nimroz after the militants attacked a police checkpoint, Afghan interior ministry said.

    According to an earlier Coalition statement, several militants were killed Sunday during a Coalition forces operation targeting a Taliban leader in Khash Rod district, Nimroz.

    The Taliban and their loyalists, though "incapable," as NATO officials put, to hold ground or to face Afghan National Security Force and international forces "toe to toe," are expanding militancy from their traditional hotbed in the south and east to the west and north, military officials and local observers said.

    The worrying security situation, plus a far from satisfactory improvement in economic and social fields, makes most of the interviewees of Xinhua, from editor-in-chiefs of local newspapers to street vendors, disappointed.

    A 70,000-strong foreign force consisting of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the U.S.-led Coalition forces are deployed across Afghanistan to help in stabilizing the security and reconstruction though, the U.S. and NATO are calling for additional reinforcement to the central Asian country.

    Six and half years on since the hard-line Taliban regime collapse in a U.S.-led military invasion, the Afghan nation, ravaged by decades of civil war, is still in the grip of militancy-related blasts and fighting.

    On June 13, militants in a fierce raid mixed with suicide truck explosion and heavy-machine gun firing on a major prison in Kandahar province in the south killed over 15 guards and freed around 900 inmates including some 350 with suspected Taliban links.

    Less than one week later, hundreds of insurgents massed in Arghandab district of Kandahar, forcing thousands of villagers to flee and posing an immediate threat to Kandahar city, the provincial capital and a major city in the south, where international forces have bases.

    Besides, insurgents are conducting daily attacks across the country ranging from ambushing on Coalition or ISAF convoys, to overnight-firing on police checkpoints, to planting roadside mines.