QUETTA: Gunmen in southwest Pakistan yesterday killed the driver of a truck carrying Nato equipment out of Afghanistan before setting the vehicle on fire, police said.
The attack took place in Naseerabad district, around 400kms (250 miles) southeast of Quetta, the capital of insurgency-torn Baluchistan province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.
Hafiz Hidayatullah, a police official in the area, said four gunmen on motorbikes opened fire at two trucks, killing the driver of one vehicle.
“The attackers then sprinkled petrol on (that) truck and set it on fire,” Hidayatullah said.
“The dead body of the driver had already been taken out by his helper,” he said.
Another senior police official, Farooq Ahmad, confirmed the incident and said that the attackers fled the scene.
The Nato combat mission is due to end next year and most of the hardware will be flown out of land-locked Afghanistan or taken by road to Pakistan’s port of Karachi, despite complications with the route.
There was no claim of responsibility but the Taliban have in the past said they carry out such attacks to disrupt supplies for US-led Nato troops fighting in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.
The organisation constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party.
The combined military spending of all Nato members constitutes over 70 percent of the world’s defence spending.
AFP
