Coordinated Attack Levels Pakistan Police Building - New York Times

The site of the attack in Karachi, Pakistan on Thursday.

KARACHI, Pakistan — A coordinated attack by gunmen wielding grenades and a powerful car bomb struck at a police compound in a heavily guarded quarter of central Karachi on Thursday, heavily damaging several buildings in a direct strike at government counterterrorism forces.

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A three-story police building was leveled, and a residential unit for families of police officers was reported heavily damaged.

As of Thursday evening, the death toll stood at 18, with at least 100 people injured, but rescuers were still sifting through rubble, and it seemed clear that the death toll would rise. Hospital officials said that women and children were among the injured.

That the attackers were able to penetrate the area — engaging police officers in a firefight and driving a bomb-laden vehicle to the compound’s second gate — was telling. Police officers patrol the streets; mass transit is barred from some streets; and gates keep most traffic from the compound. The area is home to two five-star hotels, government offices and the American Consulate.

Karachi has a history of sectarian and ethnic strife, and mosques and Western targets have been struck in the past by militant groups. But attacks directly on government targets have been rare.

Babar Khattak, a top police official, said some personnel remained unaccounted for. Twenty police officials had been on duty, he said. There were suspicions that the attack was a reprisal for a recent series of arrests of militants. Mr. Khattak said that the police counterterrorism unit had arrested nine militants in the past few days.

But there were conflicting reports about whether the suspects were in the compound at the time of the attack. Mr. Khattak said they were not, but Fayyaz Leghari, Karachi’s police chief, said that several militant suspects were there.

He said they were suspected of being members of Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, a banned sectarian group.

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4 killed in blast at Pakistan shrine - CNN International

The bomb explodes shortly after dawn prayersThe shrine is one of the country's largest No one has claimed responsibility

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Four people were killed early Monday morning when a bomb exploded at one of Pakistan's largest Sufi shrines, police officials told CNN. Eight others were wounded.

The bomb was placed at one of the gates of the Baba Farid shrine and exploded shortly after dawn prayers when crowds of morning worshipers usually leave the site, police said.

The shrine is located in Pak Pattan, an ancient city in Punjab province about 190 km (118 miles) south of Lahore.

Baba Farid is considered one of Pakistan's most revered Sufi saints.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast. But in recent months Muslim extremists have stepped up attacks against minority sects and their places of worship.

Police officials said eight people were injured in Monday morning's blast.

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US Tries to Calm Pakistan Over Airstrike on Its Border - New York Times

But even as the White House tried to mollify Pakistan, officials acknowledged that the uneasy allies faced looming tensions over a host of issues far larger than the airstrike and the subsequent closure of supply lines into Afghanistan.

American pressure to show progress in Afghanistan is translating into increased pressure on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist groups. It is also running up against Pakistan’s sensitivity about its sovereignty and its determination to play a crucial role in any reconciliation with the Taliban.

American and NATO officials said privately that the Pakistani government’s closing of a crucial border crossing might have made it easier for militants to attack long lines of backed-up tanker trucks carrying fuel through Pakistan to Afghanistan to support the American war effort.

Still, the unusual apologies, officials and outside analysts said, were intended to clear away the debris from the explosive events along the border, in hopes of maintaining Pakistani cooperation.

“We have historically had astonishing sources of resilience in our relations with Pakistan,” said Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “One should not too quickly assume we’re in a breakpoint. But having said that, the time we’re in right now, the intensity of anti-American feeling, the antipathy of militants, all of these things make new crises a little more complicated to get through than the old ones were.”

The overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has been pulling out all the stops — aggressively using the American troop buildup, greatly expanding Special Operations raids (as many as a dozen commando raids a night) and pressing the Central Intelligence Agency to ramp up Predator and Reaper drone operations in Pakistan.

He has also, through the not-so-veiled threat of cross-border ground operations, put pressure on the Pakistani Army to pursue militants in the tribal areas even as the army has continued to struggle with relief from the catastrophic floods this summer.

The fragility of Pakistan — and the tentativeness of the alliance — were underscored in a White House report to Congress this week, which sharply criticized the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and other insurgents and noted the ineffectiveness of its civilian government.

American officials lined up to placate Pakistan on intrusions of their sovereignty. General Petraeus offered Pakistan the most explicit American mea culpa yet for the cross-border helicopter strikes, saying that the American-led coalition forces “deeply regret” the “tragic loss of life.”

Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, quickly followed suit, calling “Pakistan’s brave security forces” an important ally in the war. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a private, but official, apology to Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a telephone call on Wednesday afternoon.

Both American and Pakistani officials said that they expected that Wednesday’s apologies would be effective, at least in the short term, and that Pakistan would soon reopen the border crossing at Torkham, a supply route for the NATO coalition in landlocked Afghanistan that runs from the port of Karachi to the Khyber region. The Pakistani government closed that route last week to protest the cross-border strikes.

“It’s obvious that the situation right now ain’t good,” said a senior NATO official, who agreed to speak candidly but only anonymously. “The best thing we could do is to strip away as many of the relatively smaller things as possible so we can focus on the big issues. And crazy as it may seem, the border crossing is a relatively small issue, compared to the others.”

Those other issues were flagged in the latest quarterly report from the White House to Congress on developments in the region. The assessment, first reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, takes aim at both the Pakistani military and the government.

For instance, “the Pakistani military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda forces in North Waziristan,” the report said. It also painted Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, as out of touch with his own populace, a disconnect which the report said was exacerbated by Mr. Zardari’s “decision to travel to Europe despite the floods.” The overall Pakistani response to the catastrophic floods this summer, the report said, was viewed by Pakistanis as “slow and inadequate.”

Frustration with Pakistan is growing in the United States in part because “we’re living in the post-Faisal Shahzad era,” said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Pakistani-American who was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for the attempted Times Square bombing.

Mr. Markey said that tensions among counterterrorism officials had also mounted because of the unspecified threats of terrorist attacks in Europe. “Frustration has really mounted, so the drumbeat is getting louder,” he said.

Making things worse, the administration is expected to brief Congressional officials on an Internet video, which surfaced last week, that showed men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes, underscoring concerns about unlawful killings by Pakistani soldiers supported by the United States.

A prominent House Democrat warned on Wednesday that American aid to Pakistan could be imperiled. “I am appalled by the horrific contents of the recent video, which appears to show extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military,” Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

“The failure of Pakistani officials to punish those responsible could have implications for future security assistance to Pakistan,” he said.

A joint Pakistan-NATO inquiry on the helicopter strike concluded on Wednesday that Pakistani border soldiers who initially fired on NATO helicopters were “simply firing warning shots after hearing the nearby engagement and hearing the helicopters flying nearby,” said Brig. Gen. Timothy M. Zadalis, a NATO spokesman, in a statement.

“This tragic event could have been avoided with better coalition force coordination with the Pakistani military,” he said.

Alissa J. Rubin and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan.

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Key NATO supply route hit again in Pakistan - The Associated Press

Key NATO supply route hit again in PakistanBy ZARAR KHAN (AP) – 40 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD — Suspected militants attacked and set fire to around 20 tankers carrying oil for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Monday, the third such strike inside Pakistan in as many days, police said.

The attack took place on a supply line that has been closed by Pakistani authorities in protest at a NATO helicopter attack that killed three Pakistan troops on the border last week.

It will raise the stakes in the closure, which has exacerbated tensions between Washington and Islamabad but has been welcomed by Islamist groups opposed to Pakistan's support off the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Police officer Umer Hayat said two people were killed in the attack close to the capital Islamabad by what he called "terrorists." The attackers opened fire on trucks that were parked at a poorly guarded terminal before setting them afire, he and other officers said.

The trucks were en route or waiting to travel to the Torkham border crossing along the fabled Khyber Pass, which is used to bring fuel, military vehicles, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan's other main route into landlocked Afghanistan, in Chaman in the southwest, has remained open.

While NATO and the United States have alternative supply routes into Afghanistan, the Pakistani ones are the cheapest and most convenient. Most of the coalition's non-lethal supplies are transported over Pakistani soil after being unloaded at docks in Karachi, a port city in the south.

On Friday, a day after the closure of the Khyber Pass route to NATO and US traffic, there were two attacks on oil tankers headed to the country. The convoys take several days to reach the border after setting off from Karachi and make frequent stops.

Over the past two years they often have been attacked by militants, mostly in the northwestern border region where militants are strongest. They also have been targeted by criminals, who can sell the clothing, vehicles and other equipment they carry.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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NATO fuel tankers torched in Pakistan - Washington Post

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Armed men torched dozens of NATO fuel tankers in southern Pakistan Friday, police said, as supply convoys remained blocked at a vital entry point to Afghanistan for a second consecutive day.

Police in the town of Shikarpur said 10 "extremists" shot and set fire to at least 30 NATO trucks stopped at a filling station, destroying the vehicles but injuring no one. Much of the fuel and other supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan arrive at the southern port of Karachi, then are trucked north toward border points at Torkham or Chaman.

The Torkham pass, in the northwest, remained closed to NATO trucks Friday, one day after Pakistan blocked their passage in apparent retaliation for recent U.S. air incursions into Pakistan, including an airstrike on Thursday that allegedly killed three Pakistani soldiers.

The incidents drew a strong rebuke from Pakistan and deepened tensions with the United States, an ally. Pakistan's ambassador to Belgium lodged a protest over the incursions with NATO on Friday, while Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani told parliament that the government "will consider other options if there is interference in the sovereignty of our country."

Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said Friday that military officials have not yet confirmed that Pakistani border troops were killed in the NATO airstrike.

He said the Pakistani border crossing closure has had minimal impact on NATO operations so far.

"We're still bringing in a lot of stuff" via supply routes into the landlocked country from the north and south, he said. "There has not been an immediate impact."

A border security official in Pakistan's northwestern region said passenger vehicles and non-NATO supplies were being allowed to pass at Torkham on Friday. The Chaman border crossing remained open to all vehicles, and Pakistani media reported that the NATO trucks burned in Shikarpur were heading in that direction.

It is not uncommon for Islamist insurgents to attack NATO fuel trucks. But the incidents typically occur in the northwestern mountains, where several militant groups are based and wield influence. In the normally placid Chitral district near the Afghan border on Thursday, police officials said 200 militants held a dozen policemen hostage and stole their weapons.

Correspondent Ernesto Londoño in Kabul and special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

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US: Only one supply route shut down by Pakistan - CNN International

Three soldiers were killed when NATO helicopters crossed the Afghanistan Pakistan border, Pakistani security officials said.NEW: U.S. says only one supply route is closedPakistan says its troops fired warning shotsNATO aircraft entered Pakistani airspace, ISAF said

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The U.S. military says only one supply route to Afghanistan has been closed by the Pakistani government after fighting that led to the deaths of three Pakistani soldiers, and a military spokesman said Thursday that United States is hopeful the situation is only temporary.

Pakistan banned NATO supply convoys from entering Afghanistan after the deaths of the three soldiers, whom the government says were killed in Pakistani territory during fighting between NATO troops and militants, according to a military official from the NATO-led command in Afghanistan.

Other routes from Pakistan to the war zone remain open, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Thursday. Lapan said it was too soon to assess the impact of closing this crucial route.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is talking with Pakistan to resolve the situation.

Supply convoys are all-important for the Afghan war effort, and officials from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were trying to persuade Pakistan to lift the ban. Coalition forces rely heavily on convoys from Pakistan to bring in supplies and gear.

ISAF said in a statement Thursday that its forces saw what they thought were insurgents trying to fire mortars at a coalition base in the Dand Patan District of Afghanistan's Paktiya province, near the Pakistani border.

An air weapons team targeted the suspected insurgents' firing position, located inside Afghanistan along the border area, and the aircraft entered Pakistani airspace briefly "as they engaged this initial target," the ISAF statement said.

After this strike, the "aircraft received what the crews assessed as effective small arms fire from individuals just across the border in Pakistan" and the ISAF aircraft, operating in self-defense, entered into Pakistani airspace and killed "several armed individuals."

Later, Pakistani military officials told ISAF that coalition aircraft struck its border forces.

"ISAF and Pakistani forces are reviewing the operational reporting to verify the exact location of the two engagements and the facts in this case, and we will work together to fully investigate this incident.

"Both sides have in mind that it is the insurgents, operating on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and violating the territorial sovereignty of both countries, that we are focused on fighting," the ISAF statement said.

ISAF issued "sincere condolences to the Pakistani military and the families of those who were killed or injured."

The Pakistani government said two helicopters from Afghanistan appeared to have crossed the border into Pakistan in the Mandata Kandaho, Ali Mangola area of the upper Kurram Agency and engaged an outpost of Frontier Corps through cannon fire.

The post, manned by six soldiers, is located 200 meters inside Pakistan, and troops fired their rifles to indicate that the helicopters were crossing into Pakistani territory.

Instead of heeding the warning, the choppers fired two missiles and destroyed the post, killing the three soldiers and injuring three others.

"This is the third incident of its kind during past one week. In the wake of the last incident on 27 September, contact was made at the highest military level and the incident was regretted by the USA," the government said.

NATO helicopters crossed into Pakistani airspace from Afghanistan in pursuit of insurgents over the weekend, killing 49 people, a spokesman told CNN Monday.

Crossing the border did not violate the International Security Assistance Force rules of engagement, Maj. Michael Johnson said.

Pakistan is very sensitive about U.S.-led military operations on its territory and issued a strong protest Monday.

Pakistan called the incursions "a clear violation and breach" of U.N. rules for foreign forces in Afghanistan.

The United Nations "mandate terminates/finishes at the Afghanistan border. There are no agreed hot pursuit rules," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

A senior administration official in the tribal region's Khyber Agency told CNN Thursday that Pakistan had temporarily stopped NATO supplies from entering Afghanistan in the area of Takhta Baig, which is located about 45 km (28 miles) from the border with Afghanistan.

The official asked to not be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

A commander of international forces in the western part of Afghanistan said Thursday that Pakistan's recent ban on use of supply routes is "not a problem" for troops in his area of the country.

Italian Gen. Claudio Berto, talking to reporters in the Pentagon via satellite from Afghanistan, said, "In my point of view, it's not a problem, we are really far away from Pakistan, and if you mean the goods for the soldier, they're coming through other borders, for example Turkmenistan. And we have no problem with this issue."

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