In a brazen attack just outside the fortified capital, gunmen attacked trucks ferrying supplies to forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Afghanistan late Tuesday night; killing at least seven people and torching nearly a score of the heavily-laden vehicles.
The trucks came under attack at the Tarnol depot on the motorway towards Peshawar. With many of the trucks carrying transport fuel, explosions could be heard as the inferno spread rapidly despite fire tenders rushing in from the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to contain the blaze. Most of the deceased and injured were the drivers or cleaners of the trucks.
According to the police, unknown attackers opened fire at the trucks and threw petrol bombs to set them ablaze around midnight. As the Tarnol depot is also used by private vehicles, indications were that not all the vehicles destroyed in the fire were carrying supplies for NATO.
Though trucks carrying supplies for NATO troops come under attack fairly regularly along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, this is the first time that such an attack has taken place so close to the Capital. Earlier this year, a similar convoy of trucks had been ambushed in Karachi as they left two ports of the city for Afghanistan.
