Nato helicopters attacked a military checkpoint in northwest
Pakistan on Saturday, killing up to 28 troops and prompting Pakistan to
shut the vital supply route for Nato troops fighting in Afghanistan,
Pakistani officials said.
The Foreign Office condemned Saturday’s attack.
“Prime
Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned in the strongest terms the
Nato/Isaf attack on the Pakistani post,” ministry spokeswoman Tehmina
Janjua said in a statement.
“On his direction, the matter is being taken (up) by the foreign ministry in the strongest terms with Nato and the US.”
Two
military officials said that up to 28 troops had been killed and 11
wounded in the attack on the Salala checkpoint, about 2.5 kilometres
from the Afghan border.
The attack took place around 2 a.m. in the Baizai area of Mohmand, where Pakistani troops are fighting Taliban militants.
A
senior Pakistani military officer said efforts were under way to bring
the bodies of the slain soldiers to Ghalanai, the headquarters of
Mohmand tribal region.
“The latest attack by Nato forces on our
post will have serious repercussions as they without any reasons
attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep,” he said, requesting
anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.
About 40 Pakistani army troops were stationed at the outpost, military sources said.
Two officers were reported among the dead.
Nato
supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at
Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar hours
after the raid, officials said.
“We have halted the supplies and
some 40 tankers and trucks have been returned from the check post in
Jamrud,” Mutahir Zeb, a senior government official, told Reuters.
Another official said the supplies had been stopped for security reasons.
“There
is possibility of attacks on Nato supplies passing through the volatile
Khyber tribal region, therefore we sent them back towards Peshawar to
remain safe,” he said.
Pakistan is a vital land route for 49 per cent of Nato’s supplies to its troops in Afghanistan, a Nato spokesman said.
A
spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in
Kabul said the coalition there was aware of “an incident” and was
gathering more information.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is often poorly marked, and differs between maps by up to five miles in some places.
The
incident occurred a day after US General John Allen met Pakistani Army
Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to discuss border
control and enhanced cooperation.
This raid is the largest and
most serious incident of its kind. A similar incident on September 30,
2010, which killed two Pakistani troops, led to the closure of one of
Nato’s supply routes through Pakistan for 10 days.
Nato apologised
for that incident, which it said happened when Nato gunships mistook
warning shots by the Pakistani forces for a militant attack.
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