U.S. & World

(CBS News) Suspected Taliban fighters hijacked trucks carrying Humvees and other supplies for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan this week, authorities said, in a brazen attack near the Khyber Pass that underscored the militants' grip across key mountain strongholds.

The assault highlighted the vulnerability of a vital supply route for the 65,000 U.S. and NATO forces battling a resurgent Taliban in landlocked Afghanistan. A significant amount of supplies for the Western forces go through Pakistan.

Attacks on convoys carrying food, fuel and other supplies are common on the road. But Monday's raid was especially large and well-organized. It also could further strain U.S.-Pakistani relations over rooting out Taliban and al Qaeda militants along the border, which remain entrenched despite military offensives and U.S. missile strikes.

Some 60 masked militants blocked the route at several points before overpowering the convoy, said Fazal Mahmood, a government official in Khyber tribal region. He identified the attackers as members of Pakistan's Taliban movement.

Security forces traded fire with the gunmen, but were forced to retreat, he said. The militants took about 13 trucks along with the drivers, who were believed to be Pakistani.

A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan confirmed the thefts late Tuesday.

"There were some U.S. military materials that were taken - Humvees and water tank trailers," said Maj. John Redfield.

CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports the war President-elect Barack Obama is inheriting in Afghanistan includes an insurgency that's stronger than ever and willing to turn very young men into suicide bombers, and it's a war that is creeping ever closer to Kabul.

In the most recent violence:

• A car bomb exploded next to an Afghan government office during a provincial council meeting Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding 28, officials said. The attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar ripped through the council office, flattened two nearby homes and damaged the nearby offices of the country's intelligence service, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
  
  
• Hours earlier in Kandahar, two men on a motorbike threw acid on six Afghan girls walking to school Wednesday, hospitalizing two of the girls with serious burns, said Dr. Sharifa Siddiqi. Four others were treated and released. Atifa Bibi, 14, said from her hospital bed that two men rode up to the girls while they were walking to school and threw the acid. Bibi had burns on her face, which was covered in medical cream. No one immediately claimed responsibility, and Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied that the insurgents were involved. Bibi's aunt, Bibi Meryam, said the family had not received any threats not to send their girls to school, but now they would consider keeping the girls at home until security stabilized.
  
  
• Over the border, in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, gunmen blocked the car of an American aid worker on Wednesday and killed him and his Pakistani driver, police said. The man was shot to death in Peshawar's upscale University Town, police official Arshad Khan said. U.S. Embassy acting spokesman Wes Robertson declined to identify the American or say what he was doing in the area other than to say he was not a diplomat. However, a Western security official in Peshawar said the slain American worked for a development organization with projects in the northwest. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

In the past, U.S. and NATO officials have played down their losses from hijackings and attacks along the Khyber Pass.

But earlier this year, NATO said it was trying to reduce its dependence on the route by negotiating with Russia and other nations to let it truck "non-lethal" supplies to Afghanistan through Central Asia.

Pakistani security forces, backed by helicopter gunships, hunted for the missing trucks and drivers. The military said late Tuesday it had recovered some of the stolen materials but would not specify what.

"We are using all resources to trace and recover the hijacked trucks, some of which were carrying vehicles for the allied forces in Afghanistan," Mahmood said.

NATO and U.S. officials have in the past suggested that ordinary criminals - not an orchestrated campaign by militants - are the main problem.

The Khyber Pass, a stretch of about 30 miles, has long been an important trade route and militarily strategic area traversed for centuries by armies, from Moghul warriors to British colonial forces. It abuts Peshawar, Pakistan's main northwestern Pakistan city.

In a bid to eliminate militancy in the border region, the U.S. has stepped up unilateral missile strikes there, a move condemned by Pakistani leaders who say it only deepens anti-American feelings among civilians.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was headed to the United States Tuesday for a U.N. conference on interfaith relations. He was expected to broach the subject of the missile strikes with U.S. officials.

Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, issued a statement after a meeting Tuesday with a U.S. congressional delegation saying there was a "need for restoration of trust between" the two nations and that there must be "complete respect for Pakistan's territorial integrity."

Pakistan has pursued its own military offensives against insurgents, including ones in the Swat Valley and the Bajur tribal region. The U.S. has praised the operations, but the militants have staged a wave of suicide attacks, apparently in retaliation.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)