NATO Supply Trucks Torched in Pakistan

Gunmen set fire to more than two dozen NATO supply trucks this morning in southern Pakistan, just a day after Pakistani authorities blocked the main supply route into Afghanistan. Attacks on supply trucks are fairly common, but the blockade made the trucks especially easy targets this time. “Around 20 attackers armed with rocket launchers and assault rifles attacked these trucks,” a local police chief tells the AFP. “They set ablaze 27 trucks parked there.”

Officials confirmed that the blockade, a retaliation for a cross-border helicopter strike that allegedly killed Pakistani troops, remains in place today. The helicopter attack “could lead to some very serious consequences,” a senior military officer tells the Washington Post, adding that Americans “underestimate the reaction” to something that “amounts to no more and no less than attacking the Pakistani army.” (More Pakistan stories.)