Some 30 anti-government insurgents were killed in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province as international forces raided the rebels' positions Tuesday night, an official said Wednesday.

The foreign troops targeted the militants' hideouts in Matakhand district on Tuesday at 10 p.m. local time "killing 30 enemies", spokesman of provincial administration Ghamai Khan Mohammadyar told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Musa Khan, the head of provincial council of Paktika, told media outlets in the province that majority of the victims are civilians.

Escalating militancy-related conflicts and violence in Afghanistan claimed 8,000 lives last year, a bloodiest one since 2001 when the hard-line Taliban regime collapsed and the militants went into a years-long insurgency.

(Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2008)