KABUL, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The Taliban-led attacks has increased by 10 percent within the past three month compared with the first three months this year, a NATO spokesman said on Monday.
"In terms of enemy initiated attacks I can confirm that if you look at the last 12 weeks we had a slide increase of enemy initiate attacks of about 10 percent," Brigadier General Gunter Katz, a spokesman for NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters at a weekly press briefing.
His comments came hours after an insurgent attack left two ISAF soldiers dead in restive southern Afghanistan earlier Monday morning.
"If you compared the numbers (of the attacks) beginning from this year to now and to 2011, the numbers are almost the same," Katz added.
The Taliban insurgents, who have been waging more than a decade- long insurgency, launched an annual spring offensive starting from May 3 to target security forces including Afghan government forces as well as U.S. and NATO troops across the country.
Afghan and NATO military officials said recently that impressive Taliban-led attacks would occur in the coming weeks and months as spring and summer, known as "fighting season", are drawing near.
Currently over 130,000 NATO-led ISAF troops with the majority of them Americans have been serving in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.
Taliban militants have been using Improvised Explosive Device or roadside bombs and suicide bombers in their attacks, which also inflicted casualties on civilians.
Six Afghan civilians were killed and six others injured in two separate roadside bombings in southern Kandahar province Monday morning.
Special Report: Afghanistan Situation
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