Afghan forces and the NATO-led coalition troops defused six Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in eastern Afghan provinces within 24 hours, said the NATO-led coalition forces on Wednesday.

The home-made IEDs were neutralized in Khost, Ghazni, Paktya and Logar provinces, the coalition's Regional Command-East (RC- East) said in a press release, adding that the joint forces detained five suspected insurgents in operations in Logar and Nangarhar provinces within the same period of time.

The operations in RC-East are still ongoing, it added.

The IEDs used in making suicide jackets and roadside bombs has proved a challenge for Afghan and some 100,000 NATO-led forces in the insurgency-hit country, as they are simple but difficult to be detected. Taliban insurgents often attack security forces with IEDs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.

A total of 2,754 Afghan civilians were killed and 4,805 injured in conflict-related violence in 2012, a 12 percent decrease in overall civilian casualties compared with 2011, according to a UN report released in capital Kabul on Tuesday.

Out of total fatalities, up to 868 were killed and 1,663 were wounded in some 782 IED blasts across the country, according to the report.

The UN report attributed 81 percent of the civilian deaths to the attacks of Taliban insurgents and other armed groups opposing the Afghan government, another eight percent of the deaths were attributed to Afghan and NATO-led forces and 11 percent were unattributed.