Kabul, June 18 (RHC)-- Taliban militants have reportedly launched a series of coordinated attacks on government buildings in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, killing nearly a dozen members of security forces.

Local Afghan security officials said on Thursday that at least four soldiers of the Afghan National Army as wells as seven police officers were killed when the Taliban militants overran some government compounds in the Musa Qala district of Helmand Province.

Saqi Jan, a police logistics expert in the troubled district, said that the attacks began late on Wednesday and lasted for several hours. Latest reports indicate that Afghan security forces have regained control of the area around the police headquarters in Musa Qala after several hours of fierce clashes with the militants.

In a similar incident on Wednesday, Taliban militants launched coordinated attacks on a number of security checkpoints in the Marwara district of Afghanistan’s eastern province of Kunar.

Abdul Habib Syed Khel, a provincial police chief, said security forces made a tactical retreat from a number of checkpoints following the militant raids.

Senior Afghan officials have ordered the government forces to step up security operations against Taliban hideouts across the war-ravaged country.

Afghanistan has seen a surge in the number of militant attacks in recent weeks after the Taliban vowed to target Afghan and foreign forces as part of the so-called spring offensive.

The country is still experiencing violence and insecurity nearly 14 years after the US and its Western allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.