Local police said gunmen in southwestern Pakistan attacked a NATO supply convoy, killing one truck driver.
A senior police official, Inayat Bugti, said about eight gunmen approached the convoy on motorcycles in the Bolan district of Baluchistan Province late on December 11, ordering it to stop and then firing on the tankers.
The convoy was attacked while returning to the port city of Karachi from the Afghan border, which Pakistan has closed to NATO supplies after NATO air strikes on November 26 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The closing of NATO's supply routes through Pakistan has left hundreds of NATO oil tankers and trucks stranded and exposed to militant attacks.
The incident in Bolan follows an attack by gunmen on December 8, when 34 trucks were destroyed in Quetta.
© 2011 RFE/RL, Inc
http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistani_gunmen_torch_nato_cargo/24419171.html
by staff report via gan 2011-12-12 03:01:46
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan will shoot down any U.S. drone that intrudes its air space per new directives, a senior Pakistani official told NBC News on Saturday.
According to the new Pakistani defense policy, "Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down," a senior Pakistani military official told NBC News.
The policy change comes just weeks after a deadly NATO attack on Pakistani military checkpoints accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting Pakistani officials to order all U.S. personnel out of a remote airfield in Pakistan.
Pakistan told the U.S. to vacate Shamsi Air Base by December 11.
A senior military official from Quetta, Pakistan, confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that the evacuation of the base, used for staging classified drone flights directed against militants, “will be completed tomorrow,” according to NBC’s Fakhar ur Rehman.
Pakistan's Frontier Corps security forces took control of the base Saturday evening after most U.S. military personnel left, Xinhua news agency reported. Civil aviation officials also moved in Saturday, Xinhua said.
Pakistani Military Chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani had issued multiple directives since the Nov. 26 NATO attack, which included orders to shoot down U.S. drones, senior military officials confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.
It was unclear Saturday whether orders to fire upon incoming U.S. drones was part of the initial orders.
The Pakistani airbase had been used by U.S. forces, including the CIA, to stage elements of a clandestine U.S. counter-terrorism operation to attack militants linked to al-Qaida, the Taliban and Pakistan's home-grown Haqqani network, using unmanned drone aircraft armed with missiles.
President Barack Obama stepped up the drone campaign after he took office. U.S. officials say it has produced major successes in decimating the central leadership of al-Qaida and putting associated militant groups on the defensive.
Since 2004, U.S. drones have carried out more than 300 attacks inside Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities started threatening U.S. personnel with eviction from the Shamsi base in the wake of the raid last May in which U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden at his hide-out near Islamabad without notifying Pakistani officials in advance.
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