Afghan supply route blocked in retaliation against searches

Chaman: Western military supplies passing through Pakistan to Afghanistan faced more disruption yesterday after protesters blocked one route and fighters launched their first attack in two weeks on another route.

Pakistani supply routes to land-locked Afghanistan are vital for Western forces battling a resurgent Taliban and they are likely to become only more important as the United States builds up its force, perhaps doubling it to 60,000 soldiers, this year.

The US military sends 75 per cent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 per cent of the fuel for its troops, the US Defence Department says.

Pakistani Taliban stepped up attacks on the main route through Pakistan's Khyber Pass last year and Pakistani forces responded with an offensive in late December to clear the fighters off the route.

In the first attack since then, fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades at a truck terminal outside the city of Peshawar on Monday night, damaging a truck carrying food to foreign troops in Afghanistan, police said.

The other supply route through the border town of Chaman in Balochistan province, to the southwest of Peshawar, leading to the Afghan city of Kandahar, has been largely free from attacks, at least on the Pakistani side.

Angry

But ethnic Pashtun tribesmen, protesting against security force searches for fighters, have been blocking the road to the border since Saturday. "Not a single truck has gone to the border in the past three days. We're in talks to settle things down," senior provincial government official Khaliq Nazar Kayani said.

Kayani is based in the town of Qila Abdullah, about 70km southwest of the Chaman border crossing, where the protesters have been blocking the road.

Tribal elder Abdul Qahar Wadan said the blockade would continue until the government punished those responsible for what he described as unjust searches.