Officials: NATO chopppers kill 28 Pakistani troops

Pakistan military spokesman says helicopters engaged in 'unprovoked and indiscriminate firing'; NATO-led ISAF spokesman says they were fired on from ground

NBC, msnbc.com and news services

NATO helicopters attacked a military checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing up to 28 troops and prompting Pakistan to shut the vital supply route for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

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The attack comes as relations between the United States and Pakistan, its ally in the war on militancy, are already badly strained following the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in a secret raid

 on the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May.

In a statement sent to reporters, the Pakistan military blamed NATO for Friday's attack in the Mohmand tribal area, saying the helicopters "carried out unprovoked and indiscriminate firing."

Pakistan called that raid a flagrant violation of its territory.

"Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned in the strongest terms the NATO/ISAF attack on the Pakistani post,"  Pakistan foreign ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said in a statement.

"On his direction, the matter is being taken (up) by the foreign ministry in the strongest terms with NATO and the U.S.," the spokesman said.

'Cannot be tolerated' Masood Kasur, the governor of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, said the raid was "an attack on Pakistan's territorial sovereignty.

"Such cross-border attacks cannot be tolerated any more. The government will take up this matter at the highest level and it will be investigated," he said.

Two military officials said that up to 28 troops had been killed and 11 wounded in the attack on the Salala checkpoint, about 1.5 miles from the Afghan border.

The attack took place around 2 a.m. Saturday local time (4 p.m. ET) in the Baizai area of Mohmand, where Pakistani troops are fighting Taliban militants.

About 40 Pakistani army troops were stationed at the outpost, military sources said. Two officers were reported among the dead.

A senior Pakistani military officer said efforts were under way to bring the bodies of the slain soldiers to Ghalanai, the headquarters of Mohmand tribal region.

"The latest attack by NATO forces on our post will have serious repercussions as they without any reasons attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep," he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar hours after the raid, officials said.

"We have halted the supplies and some 40 tankers and trucks have been returned from the check post in Jamrud," Mutahir Zeb, a senior government official, told Reuters.

Another official said the supplies had been stopped for security reasons.

"There is possibility of attacks on NATO supplies passing through the volatile Khyber tribal region, therefore we sent them back towards Peshawar to remain safe," he said.

ISAF: 'Highest priority' Colonel Gary Kolb, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, said the helicopters were taking part in a strike that was coordinated effort with ISAF, Pakistani military and the Pakistani border authorities, NBC News reported.

He said they had responded to small arms fire, according to NBC News. Asked to confirm that it was retaliatory, he said yes.ISAF was working on both paper and video statements, but was still determining the circumstances.

"This has the highest priority to ensure that we get all the facts straight," Kolb said, NBC News reported.

He noted that even if some of supply routes through Pakistan were closed, there were "contingencies built into the system" to deal with these types of disruptions.

Much of the violence in Afghanistan against Afghan, NATO and U.S. troops is carried out by insurgents that are based just across the border in Pakistan.

Coalition forces are not allowed to cross the frontier to attack the militants, which sometimes fire artillery and rockets across the line.