A new report shows insurgent violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, claiming about 3,700 lives in 2006 alone.

On average, militants launch more than 600 attacks a month, more than four times 2005's monthly average of 130, says a new report by the Joint Co-ordination and Monitoring Board.

The board is made up of Afghan and international representatives, including some from the United Nations.

The report said the country's rising drug trade has "significantly helped fuel" the insurgency in four unstable southern provinces.

Slow reconstruction and development is also creating hostility while hurting efforts to rein in opium production, said the report.

The insurgency "threatens to reverse some of the gains made in the recent past, with development activities being especially hard hit in several areas, resulting in partial or total withdrawal of international agencies in a number of the worst-affected provinces,'' it said.

The report's release comes five years after the fall of the fundamentalist Taliban regime. It was Nov. 13, 2001 when Taliban fighters retreated from Kabul under the threat of Northern Alliance forces. The Taliban defeat prompted street celebrations by Afghans.

A U.S.-led coalition that included Canada invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in an effort to remove the Taliban regime for providing a safe-haven for Osama bin Laden.

After a number of relatively calm years, Taliban insurgents have begun to intensify attacks using roadside bombs and suicide bombers. Afghan and NATO security forces, specifically in the southern and eastern provinces along the Pakistan border, have become the target of such attacks.

The 3,700 deaths blamed on insurgent violence is comparable to the 3,500 reported by the Associated Press earlier this year.

Currently, about 2,300 Canadian troops are stationed in southern Kandahar province. Forty-two Canadian soldiers have been killed there since 2002.