Chaman: Gunmen attacked tankers carrying fuel for US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces in Afghanistan as they sat parked at a roadside restaurant in southwest Pakistan yesterday, setting 14 of the vehicles ablaze, officials said.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, which also left one driver wounded.
Militants and criminals in Pakistan frequently attack trucks carrying supplies for US and Nato troops.
The supplies typically arrive in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi and travel overland to neighbouring Afghanistan.
The latest attack occurred in the Dera Murad Jamali area of Balochistan province, said Fatteh Mohammad, a local government official. The trucks were likely headed to the border crossing in the town of Chaman, the smaller of two such crossings into Afghanistan. The home secretary of Balochistan, Akbar Hussain Durani, said 136 Nato tankers were destroyed in 56 such attacks last year in the province. Some 34 people died and 23 had been wounded in the attacks, he said.
It was not immediately possible to get similar data from the northwest province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where such attacks are believed to be more common.
The Khyber tribal region, which is also in the northwest but not technically part of the province, is home to the larger border crossing. Police refused to speculate on the attack.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tarek said the militant group was behind yesterday's strike, which involved eight gunmen.
Assignment
"We have assigned our fighters to go after the Nato supply tankers wherever in Pakistan," Tarek told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location.
"We want to make very, very difficult all land routes for Nato in Pakistan."
The Pakistani Taliban are separate from, yet linked to, the Afghan Taliban.
While both make common cause against the US, the Pakistani Taliban also are focused on attacking the Pakistani state.
American officials said the attacks have had little or no impact on Western troops' operations in Afghanistan, noting that up to 3,000 US and Nato supply trucks are on Pakistan's roads on any given day. Nonetheless, the US-led coalition has begun relying more on other routes.
According to the US Embassy in Islamabad, up to 80 per cent of non-lethal supplies travelled through Pakistan three years ago, but just 40 per cent last year. Another 40 per cent go through Central Asia and 20 per cent go by air.
