Bomb destroys nine oil tankers in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD - Nine tankers carrying oil for international forces in Afghanistan went up in flames when a suspected militant bomb blew up under one of the vehicles on the Pakistani side of the border, an official said Tuesday.

In what was termed the latest act of sabotage against supplies to NATO and US forces, the parked tankers reportedly loaded with 44,000 litres of fuel, were destroyed in a chain reaction Monday night in the border town of Shaikhwal in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Agency.

‘Over the last three or four months tankers carrying oil for NATO troops have been regularly targeted, this is the fifth incident in this period,’ Fazal Mehmud, an official of the Khyber Agency administration, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Firefighters took more than three hours to extinguish the blaze, which caused no casualties, he said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

Spokesmen for US-led coalition and NATO-led security assistance forces in Afghanistan said they were unaware of the incident or other attacks this year on fuel supplies coming from Pakistan.