NATO forces retaliate, attack targets inside Pak

Kabul, Jul 17: In retaliation to multiple rocket attacks from militants inside Pakistan, NATO-led troops in Afghanistan used attack helicopters and artillery to fire into Pakistan, a statement said last evening. No casualties were, however, reported. The counter-attack was launched from Afghanistan's Paktika province, adjoining Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency, reported the Daily Times.

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

According to the statement, ISAF and the Pakistani Army "co-ordinated their operation closely from the outset, and the Pakistani military agreed to assist and search the area if the border firing continued.

Nine Afghan soldiers were wounded by the rocket attacks and ISAF responded immediately, the paper quoted an ISAF spokesman as saying.

Western forces in Afghanistan are coming under increased pressure as the traditional summer fighting season gets into full swing with security analysts predicting that July could be the worst month of violence since the Taliban's fall in 2001, said the report.

Already more US troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq and there are less than a quarter the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

ANI