Ashrafuddin Pirzada
LANDIKOTAL: Heirs of those truck and oil tanker drivers who lost lives in attacks and explosions while supplying oil and other stuff to Nato forces in Afghanistan staged a protest demonstration in the Takia area of Landikotal tehsil on Friday.
Several people from the deceased drivers’ families and transport union workers took part in the protest. Shakir Khyber Transport Union president Shakir Khan Afridi led the protest.
They were holding play cards and banners inscribed that they had lost fathers, brothers, and sons in different militant attacks in Landikotal when they were supplying Nato fuel and other items from Karachi to Kabul and Kandahar.
The protestors chanted slogans that their near and dear ones were drivers and other crew members and got killed in a military attack but neither the US government nor Nato heard their voice.
They said in the past twenty years at least 25 Nato drivers and other crew members hailed from Lanikotal had been killed by in targeted attack on them with IEDs and road-sided bomb explosions in their vehicles.
They said some of the Nato oil and other equipment suppliers were also directly shot dead by unknown gunmen during the US occupation of Afghanistan.
Speaking on the occasion, Shakir Khan Afridi said that Landikotal residents especially trucks and oil tankers owners and drivers severely were under attack in the past two years. He added that those who used to supply fuel to NATO and allied forces in Afghanistan were on militant target. He said dozens of trucks and oil tankers were blown up in bomb explosions while their drivers were killed on Landikotal and Tokham border. He said several other innocent residents also got killed and injured in the terrorist’s bids.
“We lost at least 25 drivers and their helpers in militant attacks and several others injured but NATO and allied forces in Afghanistan have yet not compensated their families”, said Shakir Afridi.
Shakir Khan Afridi threatened that if the United States of America and Nato countries do not compensate the deceased families they would be compelled to record their protest in Islamabad.
