KARACHI (Agencies)
Suspected militants in Pakistan set fire to tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Friday, officials said, a day after three soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike.
Attacks on trucks carrying supplies for US and NATO-led forces are routine. But Friday's incident came a day after Pakistan blocked the convoys following the deaths of three Pakistani soldiers blamed on cross-border NATO fire.
"Around 20 attackers armed with rocket launchers and assault rifles attacked these trucks. They set ablaze 27 trucks parked there," district police chief Abdul Hameed Khoso told AFP.
Senior local officials said "extremists" are believed to have carried out the attack on the tankers in the southern town of Shikarpur early on Friday.
Pakistani authorities, angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the past week, have blocked a supply route for the troops in Afghanistan.
NATO said the helicopters briefly crossed into Pakistan airspace on Thursday after coming under fire from people there.
Pakistan is a crucial ally for the United States in its efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but analysts say border incursions and disruptions in NATO supplies underline growing tensions in the relationship.
The United States has already stepped up missile strikes by its pilotless drone aircraft on militant targets inside Pakistan.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said border incursions were a "red line" and could lead to a "total snapping of relations."
About half of all cargo for NATO forces in Afghanistan travels through Pakistan, most of it via two main border crossings: Chaman and Torkham.
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.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/10/01/120879.html
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