PESHAWAR, Jan 13: Militants attacked a cargo terminal of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) located at Ring Road and damaged four containers in the small hours of Tuesday.

The security staff of Khyber Itefaq Terminal told Dawn that a group of armed men opened indiscriminate fire with small and heavy weapons on the terminal at about 12:30am and forced them to take shelter.

They said two rockets hit three containers while another hit the office at the terminal, slightly damaging the containers and smashing windowpanes of the room.

Two containers were also hit at Al-Faisal Terminal, situated near Khyber Itefaq Terminal on the same road. An official of Peshtakhara police station said that police personnel in two vans rushed to the area and foiled the militants’ attempt to burn the containers. He said an exchange of fire took place which lasted for about 30 minutes and a result the attackers were repulsed.

The official said it couldn’t be ascertained as to where from the militants had come but it was sure that they had attacked from the backside of the terminal and fled towards the Bara Stream.

The official said with the deployment of personnel of Frontier Constabulary and Frontier Corps in December last the situation had improved to great extent but as the security forces left the site militants again started attacking the supplies being ferried to Afghanistan for Nato and US forces.

Another official of a security agency said that a total of eight rockets had been fired and two of them seemed to have landed in the agriculture farms of Garhi Akhun Ahmed, but no casualty was reported.

It is worth mentioning that the militants had started the attacks since December last and so far torched about 320 trucks, containers, water tanks and Humvees at various terminals in the limits of Peshtakhara, Yakatut and Bana Manai police stations.During a visit to different terminals on Tuesday the staff told this correspondent that about three terminals had been shifted to Tarnawal area of Punjab and the rest of them would also be gradually shifted.

They said some of the terminals were being shifted to Mianwali but the idea was dropped as residents of the area had threatened to protest the move. The people, the official said, had reservations that the US shipments would lead to security problems for them.

Superintendent Police Abdul Qadir Qamar, when contacted, told Dawn that police had promptly responded otherwise militants would have torched the supplies, adding that police had tightened the security and regular patrolling had been started on the route.

To a question about the removal of security forces from the area, he said that forces would again start patrolling from 8pm to 6am on daily basis to assist the local police in the security of various terminals on Ring Road.