16 NATO fuel trucks destroyed on Pakistan border

(NECN/APTV) – At least one driver was killed and 16 NATO fuel trucks destroyed on the Pakistani side of the Chaman crossing with Afghanistan late on Sunday, Pakistani police said. The attack, near the border crossing, ripped through a line of NATO fuel trucks backed up by a two-day closure resulting from a dispute over fruit inspections. The southwestern border crossing with Afghanistan reopened on Monday, after the administrative dispute culminated in an attack on a line of waiting NATO fuel tankers. Chaman is one of two main crossing points for supplies for American and NATO troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The foreign troops get about 75 percent of their supplies through Pakistan. Pakistani customs officials said their increased and lengthy inspections of Afghan trucks carrying pomegranates and grapes prompted Afghan officials to close the border. Officials had warned the closure was a security risk because it left nearly 1-thousand trucks, many of them carrying supplies to international troops, exposed. The Taliban’s Afghan heartland of Kandahar is just across the border. Customs and security officials from both sides agreed to end their dispute on Monday, a police official said. Meanwhile, the army said on Monday that Pakistani soldiers had killed at least 45 Taliban militants in scattered gunbattles across the northwestern Swat Valley after a suicide bombing on a police station killed 17 cadets. It was not possible to independently confirm the death toll provided by the army. Sunday’s suicide bombing in Swat was the deadliest attack since the military regained control of the northwestern region in July. The insurgents have vowed to avenge the army’s recent offensive to retake the Swat Valley and the death of their top leader in a US missile strike near the Afghan border in early August.