QUETTA: Gunmen in Pakistan on Tuesday torched vehicles carrying supplies for NATO troops fighting the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, in the second such attack in 24 hours, police said.
The two tankers were attacked in Baluchistan, the southwestern province that borders Iran and Afghanistan and is suffering a regional insurgency as well as violence by the Taliban.
The attacks came a week after Pakistan reopened the main land border crossing used by NATO supply convoys, following an 11-day closure imposed after a cross-border NATO helicopter strike killed two Pakistani soldiers.
Two men riding on a motorbike held up the trucks at gun point, forcing the drivers and their helpers to leave, police official Khuda Bakhsh said.
The gunmen doused the trucks in petrol before shooting at them at Dasht Bado town, 175 kilometers (about 110 miles) south of the provincial capital Quetta, Bakhsh said.
The attackers fled on their motorbike, he said.
A senior police officer in Quetta confirmed the attack, which came less than 24 hours after three tankers were attacked in Baluchistan on Monday.
There was no claim of responsibility, but the Taliban mounted a series of similar attacks this month, exploiting the build-up of convoys caused by the border closure and saying they were avenging US drone strikes.
The United States considers Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt a headquarters of Al-Qaeda and has expanded a covert campaign of drone missile attacks targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in the region.
Pakistan only reopened the border crossing at Torkham in the northwestern Khyber region after a series of formal US apologies for the cross-border strike that killed the two Pakistani soldiers.
A second border crossing at Chaman in southwest Pakistan, however, remained open during this period.
