Pakistan: 24 dead in NATO helicopter attack

AP

Last Updated 4:22 p.m. ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistan on Saturday accused NATO helicopters of firing on two army checkpoints in the country's northwest and killing 24 soldiers, then retaliated by closing the border crossings used by the coalition to supply its troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

(The death toll was previously reported as 26.)

The incident Friday night was a major blow to already strained relations between Islamabad and U.S.-led forces fighting in Afghanistan. It will add to perceptions in Pakistan that the American presence in the region is malevolent, and to resentment toward the weak government in Islamabad for its cooperation with Washington.

It comes a little over a year after a similar but less deadly strike, in which U.S. helicopters accidentally killed two Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border, whom the pilots mistook for insurgents. Pakistan responded by closing the Torkham border crossing to NATO supplies for 10 days until the U.S. apologized.

On Saturday, Pakistan went further, closing both of the country's two border crossings into landlocked Afghanistan. NATO trucks about 30 percent of the non-lethal supplies used by its Afghan-based forces through Pakistan. A short stoppage will have no effect on the war effort, but it is a reminder of the leverage Pakistan has over the United States from the supply routes running through its territory.

NATO said it was an investigating an "incident" along the border.

"My most sincere and personal heartfelt condolences go out to the families and loved ones of any members of Pakistan security forces who may have been killed or injured," said Gen. John Allen, the top overall commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in a statement.

Much of the violence in Afghanistan is carried out by insurgents that are based just across the border in Pakistan. Coalition forces are not allowed to cross the frontier to attack the militants. The militants however sometimes fire artillery and rockets across the line, reportedly from locations close to Pakistani army posts.

American officials have repeatedly accused Pakistani forces of supporting — or turning a blind eye — to militants using its territory for cross-border attacks. The border issue is the major source of tension between Islamabad and Washington, which wants to stabilize Afghanistan and withdraw its combat troops there by the end of 2014.

In a statement sent to reporters, the Pakistan military blamed NATO for Friday's attack in the Mohmand tribal area, saying the helicopters "carried out unprovoked and indiscriminate firing" but did not give figures for the dead and injured.

The attack killed 24 soldiers and wounded 14 others, said the governor of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Masood Kausar.

The helicopters attacked two checkpoints around 1,000 feet apart from each other, one of them twice, and two officers were among the dead, said a government official in Mohmand and a security official in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's northwest.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Ties between Washington and Islamabad had already taken an especially hard hit from the covert U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town on May 2. The Pakistanis were outraged that they were not told about the operation beforehand, and now are angered even more than before by U.S. violations of the country's sovereignty.

"Any aggression on the (army) is an aggression against Pakistan," information minister Firdous Aashiq Awan told reporters. "We will not only protest, but we will prove through certain actions that the Pakistani government cannot tolerate this."

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the government was complaining "in the strongest terms" to NATO and the U.S.

A Pakistani customs official told The Associated Press that he received verbal orders Saturday to stop all NATO supplies from crossing the border through Torkham in either direction. The operator of a terminal at the border where NATO trucks park before they cross confirmed the closure. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Saeed Ahmad, a spokesman for security forces at the other crossing in Chaman in southwest Pakistan, said that his crossing was also blocked following orders "from higher-ups."

The U.S., Pakistan, and Afghan militaries have long wrestled with the technical difficulties of patrolling a line that in many places is disputed or poorly marked.

Friday's incident took place on the same day as a meeting between NATO's Gen. Allen and Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Islamabad to discuss border operations.

The meeting tackled "coordination, communication and procedures between the Pakistan Army, ISAF (intelligence services) and (the) Afghan Army, aimed at enhancing border control on both sides," according to a statement from the Pakistani side.

The checkpoints that were attacked had been recently set up in Mohmand's Salala village by the army. They were intended to stop Pakistani Taliban militants holed up in Afghanistan from crossing the border and staging attacks, said two local government administrators, Maqsood Hasan and Hamid Khan.

The Pakistani military has blamed Pakistani Taliban militants and their allies for killing dozens of security forces in such cross-border attacks since the summer. Pakistan has criticized Afghan and foreign forces for not doing enough to stop the attacks, which it says have originated from the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. The U.S. has largely pulled out of these provinces, leaving the militants in effective control of many areas along the border.

The Afghan government blamed Pakistan for firing hundreds of rockets into eastern Afghanistan earlier this year that killed dozens of people. The Pakistan army has denied it intentionally fired rockets into Afghanistan, but acknowledged that several rounds fired at militants conducting cross-border attacks may have landed over the border.

The U.S. helicopter attack that killed two Pakistani soldiers on Sept. 30 of last year took place south of Mohmand in the Kurram tribal area. A joint U.S.-Pakistan investigation found that Pakistani soldiers fired at the two U.S. helicopters prior to the attack, a move the investigation team said was likely meant to notify the aircraft of their presence after they passed into Pakistani airspace several times.

Pakistan moved swiftly after the attack to close Torkham to NATO. Suspected militants took advantage of the impasse to launch attacks against stranded or rerouted trucks carrying NATO supplies.

Senior U.S. diplomatic and military officials eventually apologized for the attack, saying it could have been prevented with greater coordination between the U.S. and Pakistan. Pakistan responded by reopening the border crossing.

[bobsniffer]

Nato troops were under attack from the Pakistani post. Rockets were fired on ISAF troops. Reinforcements were called in, who also confirm this, responded to attacks. Now Pakistanis claim 28 Pakistani "troops" were killed.
Question is, why were these Pakistani "troops" ordered to fire on ISAF??
As usual, no valid response from Pakistani authority but more posturing and media hype.
One can draw an obvious conclusion the Pakistanis wanted to create a situation and hysteria to disrupt the ISAF supply line to increase more pressure on the Obama administration for a pullout, or more compensation to PakMil.
Nothing a few more doallrs won't fix folks. I mean many dozens of Pakistani people are kidnapped or killed by PakMil and their proxy on daily basis in Balochistan, FATA, and elsewhere who are Balochi, Christians, Hindoos, Sikhs, Shia Muslims, Ahmediyas (not considered Muslims by Pak) and Mohajir with impunity and no legal recourse. The government of Pakistan has no real investigation or prosecution effort for thousands of honor killings or for the rape victims still languishing in jails. Pakistan is a very poor human rights record and with 180 million mouths to feed needs to become a responsible and an honest broker with its own people and with other nations, away from nefarious terrorism activity.

[formerusmcsgt1]

by Nikos_Retsos November 26, 2011 9:37 AM EST
.... the fact that 2 U.S. helicopters struck 2 Pakistani outposts simultaneously makes the possibility of a mistake impossible.
----
Not necessarily there, nikos.

The attacks could have been launched on bad intel or pilot target acquisition error.

Either is possible.

[borysd]

Our Military is about as inept as our Politicians and Financial system!

[formerusmcsgt1]

How about join your ass up and show 'em how it's done there cowboy?

[borysd]

Already served in the usmc ...how about you there Key board warrior?

[Nikos_Retsos]

British prime minister David Cameron has openly accused with U.S. acquiescence Pakistan of "stubbing the Western forces in Pakistan in the back!" And those accusations have simmered for long enough to establish that the the U.S. and Pakistan are "hostile allies" forced by geography to work with each other. Now the U.S. has decided to "stub Pakistan in the back" and claim that it was a mistake - even though the fact that 2 U.S. helicopters struck 2 Pakistani outposts simultaneously makes the possibility of a mistake impossible. The U.S. military has detailed maps of the border, and all attacks are planned, double checked, guided by Global Positioning Systems, and they must be in zones classified as hostile.

I believe that - despite the U.S. denials- this U.S. helicopter attack on the Pakistani army outposts was a deliberate back-stubbing on Pakistan that carried this clear message to the Pakistani army: "If your army posts at the Afghan border do not stop the infiltration of Haqqani Taliban from Pakistan to Afghanistan, we will take them out!" Will this stern U.S. message force the Pakistani army to be more cooperative or more combative? I expect to see an explosion of anti-American protests against the U.S. in Pakistan, and that will make any cooperation by the Pakistani army even harder.

I see a different U.S. scenario here: Since everything else has failed in the 10-year Afghan war, Obama and his befuddled advisers feel that pushing Pakistan into a corner with the message of "cooperate aggressively militarily with us or be sorry" policy might work! I expect the opposite to happen! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

[1notrub11]

"The checkpoint that was attacked had been recently set up in Mohmand's Salala village by the army to stop Pakistani Taliban militants holed up in Afghanistan from crossing the border "

Sort of makes you wonder....If I were Taliban and wanted these guys off my back, I'd fire at the helicopters and "draw" their attention.
Might work just like this situation, eh?

[tsigili]

Pakistan refuses to do anything about the Taliban sanctuaries inside its border, so this should come as no surprise.

[Pendraig71]

LOL you have no idea how correct that statement is.

[petesis]

Why do ya'll assume it was a mistake. It is pretty hard to make that kind of mistake.

[twiddle723]

Um, impactors? Pakistan already has nukes. For a while now. The mineral wealth of the Middle East is not ours for the taking. China and Russia aren't exactly our "friends" anymore and to be honest I think your views are remarkably naive.

[Pendraig71]

Afghanistan is not in the middle east dimwad it is central asia.

[TimeIsNowfor99]

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. To stop terrorism, you must do so through public relations. Then you can stop terrorism before the seeds of hate are sown.

[impactors]

What is going on here?? I realize that in war, mistakes are made. But with today's technology, mistakes like this should not happen. The ony other conclusion I can possibly draw from this is that the friendly's weren't. We all read about how certain segments of the Pakistan military are in bed with Al- Kaida. If this was the case here. Then I say congrats to the guys in the skies. I guess I'm crazy. But if I were running the war. I never would have sent ground troops, period. I'd have sent a representitave. He would have in no uncertain terms. Told the leaders of these nations. To put a stop to the terrorist problem. I'd give them six months to show a great effort on their part. If no substantial effort was achieved. If it appeared they weren't interested. I'd give them an up close and personal look at what a nuclear strike and its aftermath looks like. I realize that thousands of quote, unquote innocent lives would be lost. But the time for debating right or wrong has past. The time for deciding who will survive is now long overdue. The very instant our enemy achieves nuclear strike capability. Aimed at the United States, and, or its only friend in the Middle East, Israel. Make no mistake, THEY WILL PUSH THE BUTTON. That time is closely approaching. Will we risk a global nuclear war? I don't believe we will. But maybe if we met with the world powers, China and Russia. And propose that we divide the mineral wealth of the Middle East between us. They might very well see the advantage of remaining on the sidelines. Don't be shocked, it's called the spoils of war. If we do not act. Americans will join the ranks of extinct species, and America itself, will be little more than a vast wasteland. Politician of many nations. And here, from the Carter Administration to the present. Are responsible for what's coming. They allowed the seed of terrorism to grow to become a global problem. One that could very well destroy the world. For decades now, the politicians in Washington have served their own interests, financial and otherwise. They only represent themselve, and not the people who elected them to what I believe to be their overpaid, and far too powerful positions. In the end, we the forgotten people will suffer the wrath of their incompetance and corruption.

[Ben37221]

Let's wait and see if the pakistany were caught with their hand in the cooke jar again, or if this was just mistake on the part of NATO.
However, your talk of nuclear war is not only childish, it is irresponsible. I guess that you see war through the eyes of video games-thus, making it comfortable for you to talk about war. The blood of innocents must not be shared with such reckless abandonment. Thank God that we have a commander in chief that is thoughtful, and calculating rather than a cawboy president. I am hopeful that this will be resolved peacefully.