New York: Just days after a NATO airstrike
on Pakistani border posts, another incident of "heavy
artillery fire" between the two forces reportedly broke out
early on Wednesday across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border but was
"quickly defused" and there was no loss of life, according to
a media report here.
While few details of the incident were immediately
available, no casualties were reported in the heavy artillery
fire across the Afghan-Pak border in Afghanistan`s Paktika
province.
"A cross-border incident involving NATO and Pakistani
forces was quickly defused early on Wednesday with no loss of
life," Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the
American-led international coalition in Kabul, said in a New
York Times report.
Jacobson said it was reassuring that normal channels of
cooperation and communication had been opened to resolve the
issue in the latest border incident.
"We haven`t got the details yet but the most important
thing is the normal methods of cooperation worked and there
were no casualties, no damage despite heavy firing," he said.
The incident comes at a time when US-Pakistan relations
are severely strained after the NATO airstrike on Saturday
killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistan`s angry reaction to the airstrike included it
closing two main NATO supply routes to Afghanistan and pulling
out of an international conference on Afghanistan next week in
Bonn. While the NATO incident is being investigated, Pakistan
has said an apology alone would not be enough and there could
no longer be "business as usual" with the US.
PTI
