Suspected militants in Pakistan set fire to more than two dozen tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan yesterday, officials said, a day after three soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike.
Angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the past week, Pakistan has blocked a supply route for coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a crucial ally for the US in its efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but analysts say border incursions and disruptions in NATO supplies underline growing tensions in the relationship.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said the border incursions could lead to a “total snapping of relations.”
Senior local officials blamed “extremists” for the attack on the tankers in the southern town of Shikarpur.
About 12 people, their faces covered, opened fire with small arms in the air to scare away the drivers and then set fire to 27 tankers.
“Some of them have been completely destroyed and others partially, but there is no loss of human life,” Shikarpur police chief Abdul Hameed Khoso said.
The tankers were parked at a filling station on their way to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi.
The previous day, three Pakistani soldiers were killed and three wounded in two cross-border strikes by NATO forces chasing militants in Pakistan’s northwestern Kurram region.
It was the third cross-border incident in a week, the Pakistan military said. NATO said the helicopters briefly crossed into Pakistan airspace after coming under fire from people there.
Hours later, Pakistani authorities halted tankers carrying supplies for the NATO forces passing through the Khyber tribal region on the Afghan border.
About half of all cargo for NATO forces in Afghanistan travels through Pakistan, most of it via two main border crossings: Chaman, north of Quetta in Baluchistan, and Torkham at the Khyber Pass.
Another third flows into Afghanistan through the northern distribution network across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Sensitive gear like ammunition, weapons and critical equipment is flown in.
Officials say supplies for NATO forces through Chaman continue uninterrupted.
Also yesterday, a UN relief helicopter with 12 people on board went down in a lake in a flood--affected area in Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province, a UN official said.
Initial reports said seven people had been injured and officials said the accident was likely mechanical.
Pakistan has again come under the international spotlight after Western intelligence sources said a militant plot to stage coordinated attacks in Europe had been disrupted by a recent upsurge in missile strikes by US drones in Pakistan.
Pakistani security officials said they had no evidence of any specific terror plot being hatched in the country’s tribal areas, described as global hub of militants by the US. Most of the recent drones strikes have taken place in the -northwestern North Waziristan region.
“It’s no secret that there are terrorists from all nationalities in North Waziristan. They are Arabs, Uzbeks, Pakistani, Afghan, Chechans, German, Brits, Americans, everyone. And they are threat to us, to their own countries and to the entire world,” a senior security official said.
“But to say that we have any specific information that they were plotting attacks against this country or that country, then sir, we don’t have any concrete information or intelligence about that,” the official said.
He said drones strikes had killed members of various militant groups.
The US has stepped up -missile strikes by its pilotless drone aircraft on militant targets inside Pakistan, with last month seeing at least 21 attacks that have killed at least 100 militants. It was the most intense month for drone attacks to date.
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