Trucks torched at NATO supply terminal in Pakistan

[May 13, 2009]  PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Suspected Taliban militants stormed a depot in northwest Pakistan that handles supplied for NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan on Wednesday and torched eight trucks, police said.

Elsewhere in the region, the Pakistani army battled militants in an offensive that has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing.

Attacks on terminals and trucks rolling through the Khyber Pass toward Afghanistan have intensified since last year, adding to concern that more regions along the Afghan border are slipping from government control and into the hands of Taliban and al-Qaida.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned Wednesday that the threat militants pose to both countries was very real.

"Terrorists and extremists are extending their reach in whole areas of our countries," Karzai told a regional economic conference in the capital, Islamabad.

The depot attack saw dozens of militants pour into the transport terminal near the northwest city of Peshawar and set the trucks ablaze before fleeing, police official Ghafoor Khan Afridi said. Most of the terminals have few if any guards.

Firefighters quickly doused the flames, and metal shipping containers holding NATO supplies were unscathed, he said.

NATO and U.S. commanders say their losses from the attacks have been minimal and pose no threat to their expanding military operation in Afghanistan. Still, they have begun seeking alternative routes through Central Asia.

The latest attack comes as Pakistan's army is embroiled in a major operation -- launched under intense U.S. pressure -- to evict Taliban militants from the Swat Valley and two other districts uncomfortably close to Islamabad.

On Tuesday, the military said helicopters dropped commandos behind Taliban lines in Swat and claimed that it had killed more than 750 militants since the operation began in late April.

But the military acknowledged it had yet to start operations in the region's main town of Mingora, where witnesses say Taliban insurgents are in control and preparing for what could be bloody door-to-door fighting.

The latest conflict has prompted an estimated 800,000 people to flee their homes, in addition to a half-million refugees from earlier military offensives in the northwest, and adding a humanitarian emergency to Pakistan's mounting problems.

[Associated Press; By RIAZ KHAN]

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