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.
Intelligence officials said the militants fled after the attack, and confirmed that the trucks were carrying goods for NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan shut its main northwestern border crossing to NATO supply vehicles on September 30 for 11 days after a cross-border NATO helicopter assault killed two Pakistani soldiers.
The bulk of supplies and equipment required by foreign troops in Afghanistan is shipped through Pakistan, although US troops increasingly use alternative routes through central Asia.
Scores of NATO supply vehicles were destroyed in gun and arson attacks while the border crossing was shut, with Taliban militants determined to disrupt the route and avenge US drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
