Taliban threatens supply route attack

Gunmen in Pakistan opened fire on trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, torching more than a dozen vehicles and killing seven people near Islamabad, police said Wednesday.The attack took place overnight at Tarnol about 15 kilometres (10 miles) outside the Pakistani capital on the road to the northwestern city of Peshawar and in turn towards the main NATO supply route into neighbouring Afghanistan.

Gunmen attacked military vehicles and goods destined for NATO in Afghanistan, torching up to 60 trailers and killing seven people in an unprecedented assault near Islamabad, police said Wednesday.The overnight attack was the first on NATO supplies so close to the Pakistani capital and entailed one of the biggest losses on the convoys, whose presence is bitterly opposed by Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists.

Gunmen in Pakistan opened fire on trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, torching more than a dozen vehicles and killing seven people near Islamabad, police said Wednesday.The attack took place overnight at Tarnol on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital on the road to the northwestern city of Peshawar and in turn towards the main NATO supply route into neighbouring Afghanistan.

Coalition forces "are losing the war against the Taliban" in Afghanistan, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview published in France on Tuesday."The international community, to which Pakistan belongs, is losing the war against the Taliban. This is above all because we have lost the battle to win hearts and minds," he said, in comments published in French by Le Monde.Zardari told the daily that the US and NATO-led coalition forces had "underestimated the situation on the ground" in Afghanistan, Pakistan's war-torn western neighbour.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A Turkish transport helicopter with at least 11 civilians was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area in eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all the people on board hostage, including eight Turks and a Russian, officials said Monday. The civilian aircraft landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village named Dahra Mangal in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul, District Governor Hamidullah Hamid told The Associated Press.

NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid. Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes.

Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan attacked two NATO supply trucks early Wednesday, killing a driver and wounding two other people, officials said.Half a dozen militants armed with assault rifles launched the attack in Landikotal, a town in Pakistan's tribal district of Khyber on the border with Afghanistan, the officials said.Pakistani officials this month reported US drone strikes in Khyber, an apparent expansion of the covert drone programme previously confined to targeted Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders elsewhere in the tribal belt.

Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for two attacks on NATO supply convoys in Pakistan and threatened to carry out more."We accept responsibility for the attacks on the NATO supply trucks and tankers," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP."I am talking about attacks both in Sindh and in Islamabad," he said in a telephone call from an undisclosed location."We will carry out more such attacks in future. We will not allow the use of Pakistani soil as a supply route for NATO troops based in Afghanistan.