US supply trucks resume travel thru' Khyber Pass
Security forces escorted container trucks and oil tankers through the Khyber Pass yesterday after Pakistan reopened the route critical to transporting supplies to Nato and US troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan suspended the vehicles from the passageway for a security review last week after militants hijacked several trucks whose load included Humvees bound for the US-led coalition.
On Monday, a dozen or so paramilitary pickups joined a convoy of around 30 vehicles as part of new security measures. The escort trucks bore rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Earlier, the transport trucks travel with little or no security.al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, as well as ordinary criminals, are behind escalating violence along the porous Afghan-Pakistan border. The danger has made the Khyber Pass an increasingly perilous 30-mile stretch, but one that the US and Nato still rely upon heavily.
The violence in the region continued Monday when an Afghan official said a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a government office in Kandahar province, killing two policemen and a civilian.
It was not possible to confirm exactly what was being transported in Monday's convoy. Military supplies usually travel in sealed, unmarked containers. The route is also a critical commercial trade passage between the two countries.
A US military spokesman in Afghanistan insisted Monday the suspension had not affected operations there. "We continue to move supplies through Pakistan to Afghanistan," said Lt Cmdr Walter Matthews. "I can't give you the route."
Bakhtiar Khan, a No. 2 government representative in the area, said troops were authorised to shoot "at sight" any militants or otherwise armed attackers who attempt to assault the convoy.
Akhtar Gul was among the drivers who had been waiting for several days to enter the pass. He was pleased to see the armed escorts.
"Previously we had many apprehensions about the security of our lives and the trucks," said Gul, who said he did not know what was in the sealed container he was transporting. "But we hope that now it will be safe."
US and Nato officials in Afghanistan have sought to play down threats posed to the convoys coming through Pakistan, but Nato has said it is close to striking pacts with Central Asian countries that would let it transport "non-lethal" supplies from north of Afghanistan.
In April, Nato concluded a transit agreement with Russia, but it will be of practical use only once the Central Asian nations between Russia and Afghanistan come on board.
Most of the supplies headed to foreign troops in Afghanistan arrive in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi in unmarked, sealed shipping containers and are loaded onto trucks for the journey either to the border town of Chaman or through the Khyber Pass.
Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for Kandahar's governor, said besides the two policemen killed in the bombing, three policemen were wounded. Officers said they tried to stop the bomber from entering the offices of the chief of Dand district.
Suicide bombings are one of Taliban's preferred tactic in their campaign to weaken the government of President Hamid Karzai and attacks on Afghan and foreign troops.
More than 5,400 people most of them militants have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to a tally of official figures provided to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber attacked an army post in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least three people, while violence elsewhere in the region left at least five suspected militants dead.
Pakistan is engaged in a pair of major offensives against militants who use pockets of the northwest to stage attacks on American and Nato forces across the border in Afghanistan. Insurgents have retaliated over the offensives by staging a wave of attacks throughout Pakistan.
The suicide attack Monday happened in Gashkor, a village in the Swat Valley, said police official Ali Rehman. Swat, a former tourist destination, is the scene of one of the two offensives.
The other offensive is focused on Bajur, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan that is a rumored hiding place of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Security forces used artillery fire to kill at least five suspected insurgents in parts of Bajur overnight, said Jamil Khan, a No. 2 government representative in the area. The military claims to have killed 1,600 insurgents in Bajur since August.
Pakistan faces a rising militant threat at the same time its economy is sinking.
The Muslim nation is turning to the International Monetary Fund for a $7.6 billion bailout package but it also hoped for additional assistance from a newly formed group called "Friends of Pakistan," which was to consider proposals later Monday in Abu Dhabi.
The US and China are among the group's members.
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