Militants opened fire on the vehicle with assault rifles in Suki village in Mardan, police said, a district neighbouring the northwestern capital Peshawar.

The driver's assistant told police they had loaded the truck in Karachi with a 10-wheel vehicle destined for NATO troops and were en route to Kabul.

"The driver was killed on the spot. It was a NATO supply truck and was carrying a 10-wheel vehicle for NATO in Afghanistan," Iftikhar Khan, a police official in Mardan, told AFP by telephone.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack but intelligence officials blamed the Taliban.

Pakistan shut its main northwestern border crossing to NATO supply vehicles on September 30 for 11 days after a cross-border NATO helicopter assault killed two Pakistani soldiers.

The bulk of supplies and equipment required by foreign troops in Afghanistan is shipped through the Khyber region, although US troops increasingly use alternative routes through central Asia.

Scores of NATO supply vehicles were destroyed in gun and arson attacks while Pakistan's Khyber crossing was shut, as Taliban militants stepped up efforts to disrupt the route and avenge US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt.

earlier related report
Bomb kills NATO soldier in southern Afghanistan
Kabul (AFP) Dec 2, 2010 - A NATO soldier has been killed in a bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Thursday.

"An (ISAF) servicemember died following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan" on Wednesday, it said.

No further details were given, in line with ISAF policy.

The latest death takes to 673 the number of foreign troops who have died in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP count based on the independent icasualties.org web site, which tracks coalition fatalities and injuries.

This year has been the deadliest for overseas troops since the US-led operation to oust the hardline Islamist Taliban regime began in late 2001, with the insurgency at its most violent in the volatile south and east.

There are currently over 150,000 foreign troops from more than 42 countries in Afghanistan.

The foreign coalition under the command of NATO and the United States, along with their Afghan counterparts, are trying to contain a bloody Taliban insurgency in the war-torn country.

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