Taliban Attacks NATO Supplies Again - Two Days in a Row

Via Guardian UK -

Gunmen from the Pakistani Taliban torched supplies destined for Nato forces in Afghanistan for a second day running today, officials said.

The militants struck a container terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, just over a mile from yesterday's attack, in which gunmen torched more than 100 trucks.

About 50 containers were destroyed in today's assault, which again targeted the main route for supplies to troops in land-locked Afghanistan from Pakistan.

"The militants came just past midnight, firing in the air, sprinkled petrol on containers and then set them on fire," Mohammad Zaman, a security guard at the terminal on the Peshawar ring road, told Reuters.

"They told us they would not harm us, but they asked us not to work for the Americans."

Militants fired rockets at two trucks carrying supplies for Nato forces as they drove along the ring road overnight.

Yesterday's attack was the biggest yet on Nato supplies going into Afghanistan.

Security guards at two depots in Peshawar were outnumbered by more than 200 militants at around 3am. About 70 Humvees loaded on some of the trucks were destroyed. Most of the vehicles were reduced to charred hulks of metal. "They fired rockets, hurled hand grenades and then set ablaze 96 trucks," said a senior police officer in Peshawar, Azeem Khan.

The attacks came as the Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, urged western forces to leave Afghanistan before thousands of their troops were killed in the Islamist group's renewed insurgency.

Omar, believed to be hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in an email statement: "I would like to remind the illegal invaders who have invaded our defenceless and oppressed people that it is a golden opportunity for you at present to hammer out an exit strategy for your forces. The current armed clashes which now number into tens will spiral up to hundreds of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up into the thousands."

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 72% of the territory of Afghanistan, up from 54% last year, and is expanding its control beyond the rural south of the country, the International Council on Security and Development, formerly the Senlis Council, said in a report today.

The independent thinktank and research organisation said three of the four main routes leading out of Kabul, the capital, were threatened by the Taliban.