FORWARD OPERATING BASE GHAZNI, Afghanistan -- Dismounting from an armored convoy on a desolate stretch of Afghanistan's most important highway, the elite U.S. Army route-clearance team knew what to expect. They'd been struck by roadside bombs there before, and they'd been shot at there before.

Minutes after Sgt. John A. Lyons and three other Soldiers began to scour the roadside for the tiny silver command wires that trigger big explosions, insurgents hiding nearby opened fire, striking Lyons in the thigh. He threw his weapon over a mud wall and tried to scale it but couldn't; when members of his unit found him, he was on the ground, bleeding badly. He died hours later.

The attack last Wednesday along Highway 1 in eastern Afghanistan was a stark illustration of the ongoing threat of roadside attacks against U.S.-led coalition Soldiers. NATO commanders say that as Afghan and coalition forces weaken the Taliban, insurgents are avoiding direct combat by increasing their use of roadside bombs that kill not just Soldiers, but also a growing number of civilians.

Insurgents' use of what the military calls improvised explosive devices is up 22 percent in Afghanistan from a year ago, the Pentagon reported Friday. But coalition forces are finding and deactivating more than half of the bombs before they explode -- largely due to a surge in tips from Afghan civilians, the Pentagon said.

The threat has pushed route-clearance teams like Sgt. Lyons' to the forefront of coalition efforts to secure key highways. It also helps explain why Ghazni has become one of the most dangerous provinces for coalition Soldiers in Afghanistan, with 19 fatalities this year -- more than the previous two years combined, according to iCasualties.org, which tracks military deaths.

Parts of Ghazni are expected to be among areas where coalition forces will soon begin turning over control of security to Afghan forces. President Hamid Karzai is scheduled this week to announce the second phase of nationwide transition areas -- which may include Ghazni's provincial capital, about 15 miles northeast of where Lyons was killed.

"This is the No. 1 area in the country to get blown up," said Navy Cmdr. Tristan Rizzi, commander of Ghazni's U.S. provincial reconstruction team of troops, diplomats and civilians who work on relief and development projects.

KABUL — Across the street from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, shrouded from view by concrete walls, the Afghan intelligence agency runs a detention facility for up to 40 terrorism suspects that is known as Department 124. So much torture took place inside, one detainee told the United Nations, that it has earned another name: “People call it Hell.”

But long before the world body publicly revealed “systematic torture” in Afghan intelligence agency detention centers, top officials from the State Department, the CIA and the U.S. military received multiple warnings about abuses at Department 124 and other Afghan facilities, according to Afghan and Western officials with knowledge of the situation.

Despite the warnings, the United States continued to transfer detainees to Afghan intelligence service custody, the officials said. Even as other countries stopped handing over detainees to problematic facilities, the U.S. government did not.

U.S. Special Operations troops delivered detainees to Department 124. CIA officials regularly visited the facility, which was rebuilt last year with American money, to interrogate high-level Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects, according to Afghan and Western officials familiar with the site. Afghan intelligence officials said Americans never participated in the torture but should have known about it.

When the United Nations on Aug. 30 brought allegations of widespread detainee abuse to Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. military commander here, he took swift action ahead of the public release of the findings. Coalition troops stopped transferring detainees to Department 124 and 15 other police and intelligence agency prisons. They also hastily began a program to monitor those facilities and conduct human rights classes for interrogators.

But the prospect that U.S. officials failed to act on prior warnings raises questions about their compliance with a law, known as the Leahy Amendment, that prohibits the United States from funding units of foreign security forces when there is credible evidence that they have committed human rights abuses.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday that deteriorating security in Afghanistan has impeded access to medical care, driving it to critically low levels in some areas of the country after nearly a decade of war.

"Despite improvements in the quality of life for certain sectors of the population over the past decade, the security situation in many areas of the country remains alarming," said Jacques de Maio, the ICRC's head of operations for South Asia. "Access to medical care is at a critically low point in conflict-affected areas, with local clinics closed in some places because of fighting, attacks on premises, or intimidation of staff."

Although the ICRC did not name the hardest affected areas, instability and violence continue throughout Afghanistan as the conflict passes the 10-year mark this week.

A recent U.N. report said that the monthly average number of clashes and other attacks was running nearly 40 percent higher than the same time last year.

In the midyear report, the U.N. said 1,462 Afghan civilians lost their lives in crossfire between Taliban insurgents and Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces. During the first half of last year, 1,271 Afghan civilians were killed, mostly by roadside bombs.

That U.N. report said airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition remained the leading cause of civilian deaths. In the first six months of this year, 79 civilian deaths were attributed to air strikes — up 14 percent from the same period last year, the U.N. report said.

"Many communities in rural areas feel vulnerable as never before," the ICRC said. "Conflict-related displacement is up over 40 percent in comparison to last year in parts of the north."

The ICRC said that even residents in the central regional regions of Logar and Wardak provinces, near the capital, no longer feel safe, although these areas were considered relatively safe as little as two years ago. The situation has deteriorated so much in both provinces that travel after dark is not safe. Wardak was also the province where the Taliban shot down a U.S. helicopter in August that killed 30 American troops, most of them elite Navy SEALs. Last month a powerful truck bomb outside a coalition base in Wardak wounded 77 U.S. soldiers.

The ICRC said residents in Logar and Wardak "are being intimidated and coerced by all parties into taking sides."

"All they actually want to do is to keep out of harm's way," de Maio said.