Pakistan shut down the main land route for NATO supplies into Afghanistan Thursday, accusing the alliance’s helicopters of killing Pakistani soldiers in a fourth cross-border attack this week.
NATO said aircraft entered Pakistani airspace early Thursday in self-defence and killed “several armed individuals” after the crews believed they had been fired at from the ground.
The Pakistani government said it was investigating the incident in the Kurram district of Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt, which Washington has branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters and hub of militants fighting in Afghanistan.
The region is being targeted by a record number of US drone strikes and was reportedly where Al-Qaeda hatched a plot to attack cities in Britain, France and Germany uncovered by Western intelligence agencies.
“We have suspended NATO supply trucks for the time being due to security reasons,” an official in Pakistan’s Frontier Corps paramilitary unit told AFP in the northwestern city of Peshawar on condition of anonymity.
Read more: Bangkokpost.com