ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani officials said on Saturday that NATO aircraft had killed at least 25 soldiers in strikes against two military posts at the northwestern border with Afghanistan, and the country’s supreme army commander called them unprovoked acts of aggression in a new flash point between the United States and Pakistan.
The Pakistani government responded by ordering the Central Intelligence Agency to vacate the drone operations it runs from Shamsi Air Base, in western Pakistan, within 15 days. It also closed the two main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, including the one at Torkham. NATO forces receive roughly 40 percent of their supplies through that crossing, which runs through the Khyber Pass, and Pakistan gave no estimate for how long the routes might be shut down.
A NATO spokesman said it was likely that allied airstrikes caused the Pakistani casualties, but said an investigation had been ordered to determine the cause.
In Washington, American officials were scrambling to assess what had happened amid preliminary reports that allied forces in Afghanistan engaged in a firefight along the border and called in airstrikes. Senior Obama administration officials were also weighing the implications on a relationship that took a sharp turn for the worse after a Navy Seal commando raid killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May, and that has deteriorated since then.
“Senior U.S. civilian and military officials have been in touch with their Pakistani counterparts from Islamabad, Kabul and Washington to express our condolences, our desire to work together to determine what took place and our commitment to the U.S.-Pakistan partnership, which advances our shared interests, including fighting terrorism in the region,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
In a sign that the White House was trying to keep the situation from growing worse, President Obama was updated regularly throughout the day by Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, Ms. Hayden said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, all talked to their Pakistani counterparts to offer condolences and to promise an investigation, administration officials said.
Mrs. Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta issued a joint statement late Saturday endorsing the investigation and offering their “deepest condolences” to Pakistan.
General Allen, in a separate statement, said, “This incident has my highest personal attention and my commitment to thoroughly investigate it to determine the facts.”
The strikes, which Pakistani officials said involved both helicopters and fighter jets, took place overnight at two military posts in Salala, a village in Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal region near the border with Kunar Province in Afghanistan. At least 40 soldiers were deployed at the posts, Pakistani military officials said, adding that NATO aircraft had penetrated roughly a mile and a half into Pakistan to make the strikes.
What remained unclear on Saturday, and what will be a main focus of NATO’s inquiry, was what exactly prompted the airstrikes and whether they were unprovoked or resulted from a communications mishap. A NATO spokesman, Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, offered details suggesting that allied and Afghan troops operating near the border came under fire from unknown enemies and summoned coalition warplanes for help.
“In the early night hours of this morning, a force consisting of Afghan forces and coalition forces, in the eastern border area where the Durand Line is not always 100 percent clear, got involved in a firefight,” General Jacobson said, according to a transcript of his statements on NATO TV that the alliance provided American officials on Saturday. (The Durand Line is the colonial-era boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan.)
“Air force was called in into this activity,” he said, “and we have to look into this situation of what actually happened on the ground.”
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