Nato troops return fire into Pakistan

KABUL  - NATO-led troops in Afghanistan used attack helicopters and artillery to fire into Pakistan after coming under rocket attacks from that side of the border, the alliance force said Wednesday. The counterattack on Tuesday was launched from Afghanistan's Paktika province, which adjoins Pakistan's North Waziristan.

An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base had 'received multiple rocket attacks from militants inside Pakistan', ISAF said in a statement. "The troops identified a qalat (mound) as the point of origin of the attacks and responded in self-defence with a combination of fires from attack helicopters and artillery into Pakistan," it said.

ISAF soldiers coordinated their action with the Pakistan military, which had agreed to help out if firing on the soldiers continued, the force said.

Claims by Pakistani elders of a troop build-up on the border Tuesday inflamed tensions, with locals vowing to take up arms to resist any incursion.

The alliance force, which is helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban, has no mandate to enter Pakistan in pursuit of rebels but has a right to self-defence.

Afghan and ISAF officials say many of the militants who attack their forces in Afghanistan arrive from bases in Pakistan.

A surge in attacks in Afghanistan has soured the relationship between the neighbours, with Kabul accusing Islamabad's intelligence agency of involvement in the violence - which Pakistan rejects.

Meanwhile, the Nato military alliance denied Wednesday that it was massing troops on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan but urged Islamabad to do more to stop Taliban militants taking refuge.

"There is not, nor is there going to be, an incursion of Nato troops into Pakistan. There is no planning for that, there is no mandate for that, and there is no troop movement in that direction," a spokesman said in Brussels.

Reports said some 300 Nato soldiers equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry had been moved very close to Lwara Mundi, a border village in North Waziristan.

"There is no unusual military activity in that region," said the Nato spokesman, James Appathurai.

While he insisted that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was not gathering at the border, he underlined that they did have permission to shoot into Pakistan if fired upon.

"They have the right to fire back if they are fired upon, and there should be no doubt that they do it," he said.

ISAF, made up of some 53,000 troops drawn from around 40 nations, is trying to spread the influence of the weak centralised Afghan government across the country, but it is struggling to end a Taliban-led insurgency.

The task has been made more difficult by the fact that the Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda fighters and drug runners, has been using the lawless areas in Pakistan near the border as a rear base.

"There is not enough pressure on militants in the frontier provinces in Pakistan and as a result they are using these areas as safe havens in which to rest, reconstitute and then launch attacks into Afghanistan," Appathurai said.

"That is a concern for us," he said.