Afghan troops backed by US-led forces were continuing operations after local officials said up to 50 suspected Taliban were killed and 75 arrested in ground and air raids across violence-wracked southeastern Afghanistan. \"In this operation 40 to 50 Taliban were killed and their bodies are still laying on the ground,\" a spokesman for the Zabul provincial government Ahmadullah Watan Dost told AFP by satellite telephone late Monday. Some 1,000 Afghan soldiers supported by dozens of US-led coalition troops were carrying out an anti-extremist operation in Zabul\'s Daychopan district, 300 kilometres (190 miles) southwest of Kabul. The operation was executed against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda bases in Daychopan\'s Dozi mountains, Watan Dost said. The bases were \"smashed to dust\" by coalition bombing, he said, adding that there were no reported Afghan or coalition casualties. Five suspected Taliban were also arrested. The Zabul operation was launched after at least 14 people were killed in fighting over the weekend in Zabul and Uruzgan provinces where local officials said up to 300 Taliban were regrouping in the mountains. Southeast Afghanistan is in the grip of a wave of violence from suspected resurgent Taliban fighters, who are believed to be regrouping in neighbouring Pakistan\'s remote border tribal regions. Earlier this month around 100 people died in attacks, clashes with militants and fighting between rival militias over a one-week period. In Paktika province, east of Zabul, hundreds of Afghan National Army troops backed by coalition forces arrested more than 70 suspected militants during operations near the Pakistan border where up to 33 people were killed in clashes a week ago. \"The operation is still going on and they have arrested more than 70 suspected Taliban,\" Paktika deputy security commander Shawali Sarhowzawall said late Monday. Colonel Davis confirmed Operation Warrior Sweep, which was launched in Paktia and Paktika by US, Italian and Afghan troops in July, was continuing but did not give any other details. One US soldier died after a clash in Paktika province on Wednesday, bringing to 31 the number of coalition troops killed in Afghanistan since the October 2001 start of the US-led assault to topple the Taliban regime. A 12,500-strong US-led coalition force is currently hunting fugitives from the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terrorist group, mainly along the 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) Afghan-Pakistan border. (AFP)