Another attack on Nato vehicles in Pakistan
Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:05:30 GMT
Nato vehicles, destined for US forces in Afghanistan, were attacked by armed militants in Pakistan for the third time in a week, police said.
The militants hurled petrol bombs on a terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, where Nato trucks and containers were parked, destroying some of them, local police official Kashif Alam said.
This was the third such attack in a week, coming days after hundreds of NATO vehicles were destroyed in twin raids on terminals in the same area, the police official said, adding that firefighters had been called to the scene. Around 80 percent of US supplies and equipment are transported through the country, he said.
A Press TV correspondent reported that four trucks were destroyed while two of the containers were brought to safety by the authorities.
Armed militants torched nearly 100 vehicles, including jeeps and supply trucks, early Monday in an attack on a container terminal along the main overland supply route into Afghanistan.
A day earlier about 250 assailants took over two other terminals, overpowered guards and set some 200 vehicles on fire in the biggest attack of its kind.
Security along the road leading to the Afghan border has deteriorated this year with Pakistani troops recently carrying out an offensive in the Khyber region to drive out the al-Qaeda and Taliban linked militants from the outskirts of the main northwestern city of Peshawar, our correspondent said.
The latest attacks have fueled concerns that Taliban insurgents are tightening their grip in Pakistan's tribal belt and could choke the supply route, he added.