Two more NATO tankers torched near Quetta

Gunmen torch vehicles carrying supplies for Nato troops fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan.

QUETTA: Gunmen on Tuesday torched vehicles carrying supplies for Nato troops fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan, in the second such attack in 24 hours, police said.

The two tankers were attacked in Balochistan. The attacks came a week after Pakistan reopened the main land border crossing used by Nato supply convoys.

This was after an 11-day closure imposed after a cross-border Nato helicopter strike killed two Pakistani soldiers.

Two armed men riding on a motorbike held up the trucks at gunpoint, forcing the drivers and their helpers to leave, police official Khuda Bakhsh said. They doused the trucks in petrol before shooting at them at Dasht Bado town, 175 kilometres south of Quetta, Bakhsh said.

The attackers fled on their motorbike, he said.

A senior police officer in Quetta confirmed the attack, which came less than 24 hours after three tankers were attacked in the province on Monday.

There was no claim of responsibility, but the Taliban mounted a series of similar attacks this month, exploiting the build-up of convoys caused by the border closure and saying they were avenging US drone strikes.

Pakistan only reopened the border crossing at Torkham in the Khyber region after a series of formal US apologies for the cross-border strike that killed two soldiers.

A second border crossing at Chaman in southwest Pakistan, however, remained open during this period.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2010.