Peshawar, March 17: Pakistani militants have attacked two NATO supply vehicles transporting goods destined for US-led forces in Afghanistan and set them on fire in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The trucks, parked in a terminal near Karkhano market in western Peshawar, went up in flames on Thursday after a group of unidentified gunmen attacked them.
However, no one was killed in the attack,
The assailants, whose whereabouts are unknown, fled the scene.
Police cordoned off the area after the incident and launched a search operation to arrest the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, the provincial government has imposed a ban on the entry of NATO supply vehicles into Peshawar, citing security reasons. The terminals of NATO vehicles have also been shifted to Nowshera town.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants regularly attack NATO convoys in Pakistan.
The US military and NATO forces rely heavily on the Pakistani supply route into landlocked Afghanistan, more so now that Taliban attacks are on the rise.
Supplies arrive by sea in the southern port city of Karachi, where security analysts believe most of the Afghan Taliban leadership is now hiding. From there, they must travel in long, exposed convoys, through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan.
Militants in the rugged tribal areas have staged violent attacks in recent months, torching hundreds of NATO vehicles and containers destined for foreign troops in Afghanistan.
In response, the Pakistani authorities have deployed large contingents of police and military forces on all major arteries in the area to curb the attacks.
Other routes, largely through Russia and the Central Asian states, have proved too costly, both politically and economically.
—agencies