Militants In Pakistan Sever Afghan Supply Link

Guards are usually posted on heights above bridges but it was not clear why they had been unable to stop the attack.

Suspected militants blew up a bridge in northwestern Pakistan's Khyber Pass on Tuesday, cutting the main route for supplies bound for Western forces in Afghanistan, Pakistani government officials said.

Separately, a military spokesman said security forces killed at least 35 Taliban insurgents and wounded many more in an attack on Monday night in the Swat Valley, northeast of the Kyber Pass.

Militants in northwestern Pakistan stepped up attacks on the road through the Khyber Pass, a crucial route into land-locked Afghanistan, last year in an attempt to deprive international forces fighting the Taliban of supplies trucked in from Pakistan.

The 30-metre (100-foot) iron bridge, 23 km (15 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, was blown up after midnight and officials said all traffic along the route was suspended.

"Militants blew up the bridge and it's going to take some time to fix," said government official Rahat Gul.

Guards are usually posted on heights above bridges but it was not clear why they had been unable to stop the attack.

There are two routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan, one through the Khyber Pass to the border town of Torkham. The other runs through Pakistan to the border town of Chaman and on to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

The U.S. Defense Department says the U.S. military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops.

With the U.S. military set to send thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan in coming months, perhaps nearly doubling the number to about 60,000, the need for reliable supply routes will become even more important.

HEAVY FIGHTING IN SWAT

A paramilitary officer supervising work to restore traffic said his men were working on a bypass that would take vehicles across a dried-up stream past the bridge and back onto the road.

"Work is in full swing," said the officer, Saed Ali. "We've sent some vehicles across the dried-up stream and by tomorrow, hopefully, it'll be open for trucks."

Militant attacks over recent months have disrupted supplies but the route had only been closed briefly twice since September.

The U.S. military and NATO's Afghan force have played down the impact of the attacks but nevertheless have been looking for alternative routes.

"All our logistics are sufficient for our needs and we do have contingencies in place," a spokesman for the NATO force, Wing Commander Mark Later, said in Kabul.

The chief of the U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, said last month agreements had been reached for new routes into northern Afghanistan through Central Asian states and Russia. He did not give details.

In the Swat Valley, security forces attacked as militants gathered to launch an assault, killing at least 35 of them, an officer in the military's information department said.

"We opened fire with artillery and mortars on credible information that a group of militants had gathered and was planning an attack in the dark," the officer said.

There was no independent verification of the estimate.

The Swat Valley, only 130 km (80 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad, and not on the Afghan border, was until recently one of Pakistan's prime tourist destinations.

Now it is on the front line of the country's struggle against Islamist militancy and has become a test of the government's resolve to check the spread of the Taliban.

Separately, a bomb at a mosque in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan wounded about eight people, a Reuters photographer at the scene said.