ASIA: Pakistan militants torch 100 NATO vehicles: police
08 Dec 2008 9:13 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 8 AFP - Armed militants torched nearly 100 vehicles destined for NATO forces in Afghanistan early on Monday, the second such raid in Pakistan in two days, police said.
The latest attack on a container terminal near the north-west city of Peshawar came a day after Taliban militants launched the biggest such raid to date, destroying nearly 200 vehicles in the area.
This time the attackers set nearly 100 vehicles alight including jeeps and 20 supply trucks after dousing them with petrol, police said.
Firefighters called to the scene managed to save another 40.
"It was almost the same type of attack as the one conducted by 200 armed militants" the previous night, police official Anwar Zeb told AFP.
"The militants fled from the scene when police arrived," he added.
A security guard said around 200 armed men had attacked the terminal in the early hours before fleeing.
Such attacks occur frequently in Pakistan, but the militants have become more daring in recent months and police described the first raid, in the early hours of Sunday, as the biggest of its kind so far.
In that incident, the attackers overwhelmed security guards -- killing one -- in a coordinated raid targeting three different locations in Peshawar.
NATO has some 50,000 troops in Afghanistan and much of their supplies come through Pakistan.
Pakistan last month barred delivery of sealed containers and oil tankers through the Khyber Pass for a week after Taliban fighters in the rugged lawless area hijacked 15 trucks destined for Afghanistan and looted the vehicles.
But the country's army chief vowed last month to keep the supply line to Afghanistan open, reaffirming support for the alliance's mission there.
A spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan on Sunday played down the impact of the attack and said he expected Pakistan's military to increase security.
"We have multiple avenues of supply lines to ensure the troops have what they need," Greg Julian told AFP.
"We are looking at other means for providing security. Beside the two main roads from Quetta to Kandahar and from Peshawar to Jalalabad, we have alternate roads from the North."
Pakistan's tribal belt became a safe haven for hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led toppling of the hardline Taliban regime in Kabul in late 2001.
