Anger widen in Pakistan Sunday over a NATO cross-border air strike that murdered 24 Pakistani soldiers and could weaken the U.S. attempts to end the war in Afghanistan.
Sunday night in Pakistan, in excess of 40 hours after the mishap, many queries remained.
NATO explained the deaths as a "tragic unintentional incident" and said an inquiry was in progress. A Western official and an Afghan security officer who requested anonymity said NATO troops were responding to fire from across the border.
It's possible both clarifications are accurate: that a retaliatory attack by NATO troops took a tragic, wrong turn in cruel terrain where recognizing friend and foe can be tricky.
"All of this is tremendously gloomy and requires to be inspected," said a U.S. official in Washington, who spoke on condition of secrecy. "Our objective today is ... that the inquiry gets increased in a way that is confidence-building on all sides."
Insurgents often assault from Pakistani soil or run after battle across a porous border that NATO-led troops, under their UN mandate, cannot cross.
What is obvious is the mishap could weaken U.S. attempts to make better ties with Pakistan so that the local power helps stabilize Afghanistan before NATO war troops go home by the end of 2014.
The strike was the newest identified annoyance by the United States, which furious Pakistan's powerful military with a one-sided special forces raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.
Several of gathered outside the American consulate in the city of Karachi to gripe against the NATO attack.
A Reuters reporter at the scene said the annoyed crowd shouted "Down with America." One young man climbed on the wall surrounding the heavily equipped compound and attached a Pakistani flag to snide wire.
"America is striking our borders. The government should instantly split ties with it," said Naseema Baluch, a housewife attending the protest march. "America desires to take up our country but we will not let it do that."
Pakistan buried the troops died in the air strike on Sunday. Television stations showed coffins draped in green and white Pakistani flags in a prayer ceremony at the headquarters of the local command in Peshawar, attended by army chief General Ashfaq Kayani.
Militants attacking NATO forces have long taken benefit of the truth that the coalition's mandate finishes at the border to either assault from within Pakistan or run away to relative secure after an attack.
Three Pakistani security men were murdered last year by NATO gun-ships. NATO said then that its forces had wrongly advice shots from Pakistani forces for an insurgents attack.
In the fresh incident, a Western officer and a senior Afghan security officer said NATO and Afghan forces had come under fire from across the border with Pakistan before NATO aircraft strike a Pakistani army post, killing the soldiers.
"They came under cross-border fire," the Western officer said, without making out the source of the fire.
The Afghan authorities said troops had come under fire from inside Pakistan as they were sliding from helicopters, which had returned fire.
Both authorities asked not to be identified because the attack is so sensitive.
Pakistan has said the air-strike was an unprovoked attack and has said it keeps the right to strike back.
U.S. and NATO authorities are endeavoring to calm strains but the soldiers' deaths are testing a bad marriage of expediency between Washington and Islamabad. Thousands of Pakistanis thought their army is combating a war against insurgents that only serves Western interests.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar talked with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by telephone early Sunday to express the deep sense of anger felt across Pakistan" and warned that the mishap could weaken attempts to make better relations, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Pakistan closed down NATO supply roads into Afghanistan in revenge for the incident, the lethal of its kind since Islamabad anxiously allied itself with Washington following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Pakistan is the way for about half of NATO supplies shipped overland to its troops in Afghanistan. Land consignments account for about two thirds of the alliance's cargo.
A same mishap on Sept 30, 2010, which dies two Pakistani security men, led to the closure of one of NATO's supply roads through Pakistan for 10 days.
U.S. ties with Pakistan have undergone numerous great holds up beginning with the one sided U.S. special forces raid in May that killed bin Laden in a Pakistani town where he had seemingly been residing for years.
"From Raymond Davis and his gun slinging in the streets of Lahore to the Osama bin Laden incident, and immediately to the firing on Pakistani soldiers on the unstable Pakistan-Afghan border, things hardly look like able to get any worse," said the Daily Times.
Islamabad depends on billions in U.S. aid and Washington thinks Pakistan can help it bring about peace in Afghanistan.
But it is continuously fighting Anti-American emotions over everything from U.S. drone aircraft strikes to Washington's calls for economic restructurings.
"We should finish our association with America. It's good to have hostility with America than friendship. It's nobody's friend," said laborer Sameer Baluch.
In Karachi, numerous truck drivers who should have been carrying supplies to Afghanistan were inoperative.
Taj Malli valiant the risk of Taliban assaults to deliver supplies to Afghanistan so that he can support his children. But he feels it is time to end the road permanently in protest.
"Pakistan is so significant against money. The government must suspend all supplies to NATO so that they understand the value of Pakistan," he said.
