Armed militants torched nearly 100 vehicles, including jeeps and supply trucks, early Monday in the second attack in as many days on container terminals along the main overland supply route into Afghanistan.

A day earlier about 250 assailants took over two other terminals, overpowered guards and set some 200 vehicles on fire in the biggest attack of its kind.

"The overall impact on our logistical efforts to resupply US forces, NATO forces, ISAF (International Security Assistance) Forces as well as Afghan forces has been small and has had an overall insignificant impact to date," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

"That said, we constantly are reviewing and adjusting our security procedures based on our own assessments of the environment," he told reporters. "We are looking at ways to mitigate the effect of these attacks."

The attacks underscored the vulnerability of US military supply lines through Pakistan at a time when the US military is gearing up for a major buildup in Afghanistan.

Beginning early next year, the United States is expected to nearly double the size of its 32,000-strong force in Afghanistan, which will mean a surge in heavy equipment and more fuel and other supplies to sustain the enlarged force.

"Right now it hasn't caused a crisis, it hasn't caused a problem with resupply," said a military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But are we watching it? Oh, yes, we are."

As much as 80 percent of US military supplies to Afghanistan -- from fuel to heavy equipment -- go through Pakistan, much of it through a single road that threads through the Khyber Pass linking the two countries.

"That's the best opening through the Hindu Kush, roadwise, to get stuff in between Afghanistan and Pakistan," the official said.

There are other overland routes from Pakistan but the roads are worse and they also go through territory infested with armed insurgent groups, he said.

A northern route into the country through Uzbekistan has been closed since late 2005 when the US military was evicted from Karshi-Khanabad.

The former Soviet air base had served as a crucial US logistics hub during the US military buildup that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The head of the US Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, traveled to Tashkent in January to revive contacts with the regime but there has been no sign of a thaw and deep differences persist over Uzbekistan's human rights record.

"We're looking at alternatives," the military official said. "There are various countries in the region. The Azerbaijanis have said we could try to get stuff through that way."

That would involve shipping supplies across the Caspian from Baku to Turkmenistan, which has begun to open to the outside world since the death in 2006 of its authoritarian leader, Suparmurat Niyazov.

Afghanistan and Turkmenistan signed agreements in April to build a natural gas pipeline through western Afghanistan to Pakistan and to extend a rail line into Afghanistan. But those projects will not begin before 2010.

Meanwhile, the US military must rely on the Pakistani military to deal with the near-term security problems for shipments moving overland through the Khyber Pass.

The Pakistani military recently sent two additional battalions to the region to protect convoys on roads that have come under insurgent attack, Major General Michael Tucker, the deputy chief of staff for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters Friday.

The latest attacks, however, targeted staging areas off the road where trucks had assembled.

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