Pat Dollard | Young Americans

KABUL, June 23, 2008 (Reuters) — U.S.-led coalition troops killed some 55 Taliban insurgents who ambushed them in southeastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border, the U.S. military said on Monday.

There has been a sharp rise in violence along Afghanistan’s eastern frontier in recent months. NATO generals say de-facto ceasefires between Pakistan’s new government and militants in its border region free up insurgents to infiltrate into Afghanistan.

Taliban insurgents ambushed the coalition forces with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in the Zerok district of Paktika province on Friday, a U.S. military statement said.

“Around 55 anti-Afghan forces were killed, 25 wounded and three detained as part of the combined response of coalition ground and air forces,” the statement said.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan do not usually disclose Taliban casualties and normally use vague formulations such as saying “several” militants were killed.

Elsewhere, coalition troops killed several insurgents in operations in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, and in Helmand province in the south.

More than 6,000 people were killed in Afghanistan last year and this year there are no signs of any let-up in the fighting with the Taliban unable to overwhelm Afghan and foreign forces and the government and its allies unable to quash the insurgency.