Pakistan backing Afghan attacks, says UK officer

LONDON: Bomb attacks on US and Nato forces in Afghanistan are being funded and planned from Iran and Pakistan, a senior British officer has said.

Major General Gordon Messenger, who is the spokesman for Britain's mission in Afghanistan said Taliban insurgents were altering their tactics to launch more long-range sniper attacks on Nato forces.

He told newspersons here that British military intelligence has found "evidence" that some of the IED attacks are being supported from outside Afghanistan.

"We are looking beyond Afghanistan in terms of the provision of some of the more sophisticated components and the provision of finance," he said.

"There is evidence that something is coming in from Iran, something is coming in from Pakistan".

Last month, a London School of Economics report said that Pakistan's ISI intelligence service gives extensive backing to the Afghan insurgency.

However, Maj Gen Messenger said there was no evidence of foreign "institutional" support for IED attacks in Afghanistan in the same way that parts of the Iranian regime backed bomb attacks on international forces in Iraq, the Daily Telegraph reported today.

He said there was a constant "arms race of tactics and technology" between Nato forces and their opponents.

Recent weeks have seen an increase in the number of British troops killed by gunshots.

Maj Gen Messenger said, "There has been an increase in a tactic which is more accurate single-shot fire rather than loosing off a magazine in our direction. Our tactics are evolving to counter it".

However, he insisted that the increase in casualties from gunfire was "not statistically significant" and said: "We are not drawing too many conclusions from it".