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US airstrike near Afghan border kills 11 Pakistan troops

AFP, Peshawar
Eleven Pakistani troops were killed in a US airstrike near the Afghan border yesterday, in an incident that Islamabad said could jeopardise cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Pakistan's military strongly condemned the "completely unprovoked and cowardly" attack, the first of its kind since Islamabad joined Western efforts to combat the Taliban in the wake of the September 11,2001 attacks.
The incident heightened tensions between Pakistan and US-led forces in Afghanistan, who recently warned that the new government's decision to hold peace talks with the militants could increase cross-
borderinfiltration.
An army statement quoting a spokesman said a paramilitary checkpost at Gora Prai in the Mohmand tribal agency was "destroyed by coalition forces in Afghanistan through aerial attack", killing 11 troops including an officer.
"The spokesman condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act on the FC (Frontier Corps) post and regretted the loss of precious lives of our soldiers," the statement said.
“He blamed the coalition forces for violent act and said that the incident had hit at tire very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers arc
supporting the coalition in the war against terror," it said.
Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the coalition, it said.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan referred queries to the US embassy in Islamabad, which in turn said that the Pentagon was dealing with the matter. The Afghan military made no immediate comment.
Security officials said the deaths came after Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy the strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, which borders eastern Afghanistan.
The post was in an area that has long been disputed between the two countries.
Pakistani troops repulsed the Afghan soldiers and the coalition then bombed the area. Coalition aircraft also killed around 15 Taliban militants about a kilometre (half a mile) away, the officials said.
A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants, Maulvi Omar, said eight "mujahideen (holy warriors)" were killed in an air strike by coalition helicopters.
He also said the rebels had shot down a coalition helicopter and captured seven Afghan soldiers when they were returning from "attacking" the post. There was no confirmation of either claim.
Pakistan has protested over a series of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months, including one in the tribal region of Bajaur in May that killed more than a dozen
people.
Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells but it appears to be the first time that any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.
Disputes over the porous, 1,500-mile (2,500-kilometre) frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both key allies in the US-led "war on terror," have flared up several times in recent years.
Pakistan's new government, which ousted allies of President Pervez Musharraf in elections in February, has entered peace talks with pro-Taliban militants in the tribal belt, causing concerns among its Western allies.
The attack came two days after a US think-tank said in a report that members of Pakistan's intel-ligence services and its paramilitaries were supporting Taliban insurgents who enter Afghanistan to attack US and Nato forces.
The study by the RAND corpo-ration, funded by the US Department of Defence, said that if Taliban bases in Pakistan were not eliminated, the forces supporting the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "will face crippling long-term consequences in their effort to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan.”
Pakistan's military denounced the claims in a statement as "yet another smear campaign maligning Pakistan armed forces and creating differences as well as misunderstanding amongst the coalition partners.”