ISLAMABAD - Suspected Taliban gunmen in Pakistan set fire to more than 50 trucks carrying supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan, killing at least seven people in the first such attack near the capital, police said on Wednesday.

The Taliban have previously attacked trucks carrying supplies for United States-led foreign forces in Pakistan's volatile northwest and southwest that borders Afghanistan, but this raid, less than a 30-minute drive from Islamabad late on Tuesday, was unprecedented.

At least 10 gunmen arrived on motorbikes and small pickup trucks at a depot near Tarnol village, killing drivers and workers. The militants escaped, leaving the shells of supply trucks in flames.

The trucks were due to carry fuel, food and other supplies to Afghanistan. The trucks do not usually carry arms.

The assault underscores growing insecurity in Pakistan where the Taliban have unleashed a wave of suicide and bomb attacks across the country in retaliation for military offensives on their strongholds in the northwest.

Militants allied to the Pakistani Taliban killed more than 80 people in two brazen attacks on Ahmadiyya, a minority religious sect, in the eastern city of Lahore late last month.

But the latest attack comes after months of relative calm around the heavily guarded Pakistan capital and throws into question how safe Islamabad is from attack.

"This is surprising how close to Islamabad a group of so many militants have come, and got away with it," said Talat Masood, a retired general who is now a security analyst. "It shows there are serious security lapses."

The US military sends 75 percent of its supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops.

The last attack on a convoy was in April when militants torched 12 trucks and killed four policemen in Punjab province.

The attacks, especially in the northwestern Khyber tribal region, have forced NATO to look for alternative routes, including through Central Asia.

Six security personnel were killed late on Tuesday in an attack by militants in the northwestern Orakzai tribal region. The army killed 30 militants in a counter offensive, a spokesman for the paramilitary frontier corps said.

Another six militants and two soldiers were killed in clashes in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border late on Tuesday.

Reuters

(China Daily 06/10/2010 page11)