Militants attack Nato truck depot in Pakistan: police

Taliban militants launched a rocket attack on a Nato supply depot in northwest Pakistan early on Tuesday, torching one truck and damaging three others, police said.

The attack on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar was the first since Pakistan launched a massive military operation late last month in the rugged Khyber tribal region bordering Afgahanistan, to clear militants from the area.

That offensive was mounted after a series of spectacular attacks on depots in and around Peshawar in which hundreds of vehicles used to ferry supplies to Nato and US forces in Afghanistan were torched.

"The militants fired six rockets on a Nato terminal during the night. One truck was hit and it caught fire, while three other vehicles suffered minor damage," senior police officer Fida Mohammad told AFP.

Police and paramilitary soldiers tracked down the attackers and a brief gun battle ensued, he said. After about 30 minutes, the militants fled.

There were no reports of any casualties, the officer said.

Authorities were forced to close the highway linking Peshawar to the Afghan border town of Torkham for several days at the height of the army offensive in the Khyber area. It was reopened during daylight hours on January 5.

The bulk of the supplies and equipment required by Nato and US-led forces battling the Taliban insurgency are transported to Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass.

But the Peshawar-Torkham Road passes through the heart of Pakistan's lawless tribal zone, where extremists sought refuge after Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime was ousted in a US-led invasion at the end of 2001.

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