Pakistan says NATO strike kills 23 soldiers

It was the deadliest NATO strike reported by Pakistan during the 10-year war in Afghanistan and looked set to inflame already extremely difficult US-Pakistani relations still reeling from the May killing of Osama bin Laden.

The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was aware of an incident and seeking further information about what happened in Mohmand, part of Pakistan\'s lawless tribal belt branded an Al-Qaeda hub by Washington.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani "strongly condemned" the attack and "on his directions the matter is being taken up by the foreign ministry, in the strongest terms, with NATO and the US", the government announced.

Gilani cut short a weekend visit to his home town to return to Islamabad for crisis talks with President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, state TV reported.

Pakistan\'s military earlier condemned the pre-dawn attack on the border post in Baizai district as "unprovoked" and "indiscriminate".

"The death toll is more than 20," a military official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to release the casualty figures to the media. Among the dead was a major.

Intelligence officials said between 23 and 25 troops had been killed.

Within hours of the strike, Pakistan stopped NATO supplies crossing the Torkham border into Afghanistan and Pakistan\'s acting ambassador in Washington had reportedly lodged a formal protest with the State Department.

"We have stopped NATO supplies after receiving orders from the federal government," said Mutahir Hussain, a senior administration official in Khyber tribal region, on the Afghan border.

"Supply trucks are being sent back to Peshawar," he told AFP.

Khyber straddles the main NATO supply line into landlocked Afghanistan from the Pakistani Arabian Sea port of Karachi, but officials at the border in Chaman in the southwest said convoys were still being allowed to cross.

In Kabul, a spokesman for ISAF told AFP: "We are aware that an incident did take place. We are still in the process of gathering information."

Pakistan\'s Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said such attacks fan rampant anti-Americanism in the nuclear-armed Muslim country of 167 million.

"They fan anti-US feelings. NATO attacks breach our sovereignty. Pakistan and its society cannot tolerate this," she told reporters.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been in crisis since an American raid killed Osama bin Laden near the capital without prior warning and after a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January.

US officials have long accused the Pakistani military of playing a double game in supporting Afghan Taliban militants, coming to a head in September when the then top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pakistan of colluding with the Haqqani faction in a siege on the US embassy in Kabul.

Pakistan this week forced its envoy to the United States, Husain Haqqani, to step down over a scandal in which he was accused of seeking American help in reining in Pakistan\'s powerful military after the bin Laden raid.

His successor, liberal rights campaigner and ruling-party lawmaker Sherry Rehman has yet to arrive in Washington.

US drones carry out routine missile attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan\'s lawless tribal belt, where American officials say neutralising Islamist militants is vital to winning the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has frequently accused NATO of violating its airspace in pursuits of Taliban militants, but never before over such a deadly strike.

The last crisis occurred in September 2010 when Pakistan shut the main land route for NATO supplies at Torkham for just under two weeks after accusing NATO of killing three Pakistani troops in another attack in its northwest.

The border was reopened after the United States formally apologised.

Since the bin Laden raid Pakistani and US and Afghan officials have traded increasing complaints about cross-border attacks coming from both countries.

At talks in Islamabad last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Pakistan to take action within "days and weeks" on dismantling militant havens and encouraging the Taliban into peace talks.

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