World | Pakistan
Truck drivers refuse to carry Nato supplies after upsurge in attacks
Many Pakistani truckers have halted taking supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan because of an upsurge in militant attacks on goods and equipment trucked through Pakistan, transport company officials said yesterday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:09 December 16, 2008
Karachi: Many Pakistani truckers have halted taking supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan because of an upsurge in militant attacks on goods and equipment trucked through Pakistan, transport company officials said yesterday.
Nato has been looking for alternatives to the main supply route in Pakistan after a surge in attacks by Al Qaida-linked militants, including the destruction of about 300 trucks in five attacks last week.
While some trucks were getting through to the border yesterday, a main truckers' association said it had stopped sending goods to northwest Pakistan from the country's main port in Karachi.
60,000 troops
"We have stopped supplies for Nato forces for security reasons," said Noor Khan Niazi, president of the Karachi Goods Carriers Association. His members truck most Western military supplies from Karachi port to depots on the outskirts of northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. From there, Peshawar-based truckers take the goods through the Khyber Pass to the border crossing at Torkham.
"They are killing drivers and destroying everything. We have sent nothing for the last eight to 10 days," Niazi said.
About 75 per cent of the vehicles, parts, weapons, fuel, water and food needed to sustain more than 60,000 Western troops in Afghanistan move through the pass and a second overland route to the south between Pakistan's Quetta and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
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