NATO Attack Killed 24 Pakistani Soldiers
November 26th, 2011Update: Pakistan Tells NATO to Leave Air Base
The Pakistani government has given the US fifteen days to vacate an airfield in Balochistan province after an alleged cross-border attack which killed 25 Pakistani soldiers.
The attack on a military checkpoint in northwest Pakistan also wounded at least a dozen soldiers.
A spokesman for the NATO-led alliance in Afghanistan confirmed on Saturday that it was “highly likely” the alliance’s aircraft killed Pakistani soldiers.
“Close air support was called in, in the development of the tactical situation, and it is what highly likely caused the Pakistan casualties,” General Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told the Reuters news agency.
—End Update—
Via: AP:
Pakistan on Saturday accused NATO helicopters and fighter jets of firing on two army checkpoints in the country’s northwest and killing 24 soldiers. Islamabad retaliated by closing the border crossings used by the international coalition to supply its troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
The incident before dawn Saturday was a major blow to already strained relations between Islamabad and U.S.-led forces fighting in Afghanistan. It will add to perceptions in Pakistan that the American presence in the region is malevolent, and further fuel resentment toward the weak government in Islamabad for its cooperation with Washington.
It comes a little more than a year after a similar but less deadly strike near the Afghan border in which U.S. helicopters accidentally killed two Pakistani whom the pilots mistook for insurgents. Pakistan responded by closing the Torkham border crossing to NATO supplies for 10 days until the U.S. apologized.
On Saturday, Pakistan went further, closing both of the country’s border crossings into landlocked Afghanistan. NATO trucks about 30 percent of the non-lethal supplies used by its Afghan-based forces through Pakistan. A short stoppage will have no effect on the war effort, but serves as a reminder of the leverage Pakistan has over the United States from the supply routes running through its territory.
NATO said it was investigating an “incident” along the border.
