KABUL, July 16: Nato forces in Afghanistan hit targets inside Pakistan with artillery and attack helicopters on Tuesday after coming under rocket fire from across the border, an alliance statement said.

Troops from Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “received multiple rocket attacks from militants inside Pakistan, July 15”, the statement said.

“The troops identified a (compound) as the point of origin of the attacks and responded in self-defence with a combination of fire from attack helicopters and artillery into Pakistan.”

Nine Afghan soldiers were wounded by the rocket attacks and ISAF responded immediately, a spokesman said. The Pakistan army and ISAF “coordinated their operation closely from the outset. The Pakistani military agreed to assist and search the area if the border firing continued,” the statement said.

But Nato denied it had any intention of mounting any incursion onto Pakistani soil.

“There is not, nor is there going to be, an incursion of Nato troops into Pakistan. There is no planning for, no mandate for, an incursion of Nato troops into Pakistan,” spokesman James Appathurai told a news briefing in Brussels.

But, he said, Nato troops “have the right to fire back in self-defence into Pakistan”.

Western forces in Afghanistan are coming under increased pressure as the traditional summer fighting season gets into full swing with security analysts predicting July could be the worst month of violence yet since the Taliban’s fall in 2001.

Already more US troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq and there are less than a quarter the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The Taliban have seized the initiative and the headlines in recent weeks with a series of high-profile attacks.

US troops pulled out of a remote outpost in north-eastern Afghanistan, three days after Taliban militants briefly breached the defences and killed nine US soldiers _ the biggest single loss of life for American forces in Afghanistan since 2005.

Foreign troops have also come under pressure in Afghanistan from a series of charges that their aircraft killed civilians.

Four women, four girls and an eight-year-old boy were killed in air strikes in the western province of Farah on Tuesday, local officials said. --Agencies

Our Correspondent in Miramshah adds: Mortar shells fired from across the Afghan border landed in the Angoor Adda area of North Waziristan on Wednesday. Pakistani forces fired back, sources said.

Locals said the exchange of fire followed a Taliban attack on a security camp of Nato forces near the border in Paktika province. After retaliation by the allied forces, eight shells landed in Angoor Adda.

The shelling did not cause any loss of life or damage.