ISLAMABAD – Pakistan said Saturday it will reopen a key border crossing and allow convoys to resume delivering supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, ending a 10-day blockade during which trucks were stranded on their way to the border and almost 150 were destroyed by attackers.

Pakistan closed the northwest crossing at Torkham on Sept. 30 in an apparent protest over a NATO helicopter incursion that killed two of its soldiers on the border.

Additional Photos

Local residents look at burning oil tankers after a militant attack in Mithri, about 120 miles east of Quetta, Pakistan, on Saturday. Gunmen armed with a rocket torched 29 NATO oil tankers in southwestern Pakistan before dawn Saturday. The Associated Press

Since the closure, there have been almost daily attacks on the scores of trucks stranded on their way to Torkham from the port city of Karachi, and on those bottlenecked on the roads to a smaller crossing at Chaman in the southwest that has remained open.

Hours before the announcement of the reopening, gunmen armed with a rocket attacked 29 tankers carrying NATO fuel supplies that had been stopped outside a roadside restaurant in southwestern Pakistan, setting them ablaze, local government official Abdul Mateen said.

It was unclear who was behind the latest attack, but the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for similar assaults on NATO supplies.

Pakistan is a key supply route for fuel, military vehicles, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

Though the United States has said the Torkham closure has not affected its ability to keep troops supplied, the blockade raised tensions with Pakistan, with which Washington has a close but often troubled alliance in the fight against militants. It also came just as the United States was stepping up its shadow war on militants harbored in Pakistan’s border regions.

The United States has dramatically increased the number of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt, including two late Friday in North Waziristan that killed nine suspected militants — the seventh and eighth missile strikes this month.

In September, the United States was believed to have launched at least 21 such attacks, nearly all of them in North Waziristan. The United States rarely acknowledges the covert missile strike program. Pakistan officially opposes the program, but is believed to secretly support it.

The United States on Wednesday apologized for the helicopter strike that prompted the blockade after an investigation concluded the “tragic event could have been avoided with better coalition force coordination with the Pakistan military.” Pakistan’s Foreign Office then announced Saturday it had decided to reopen the crossing “with immediate effect.”

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