ISLAMABAD, June 12 (agencies): The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan released footage Thursday of a skirmish with militants that Pakistan claims resulted in an airstrike on one of its border posts that killed 11 of its troops. Pakistan has lodged a strong diplomatic protest, saying the bombing of the Gorparai post in the Mohmand frontier region on Tuesday was a "completely unprovoked and cowardly act."
But Pakistani and U.S. officials have given widely differing accounts of an event that threatens to further sour relations between key allies in Washington's war on terror - - a partnership already unpopular among Pakistanis.
To support its version, the coalition on Thursday took the unusual step of releasing excerpts of a video shot by a surveillance drone circling above the mountainous battle zone.
The grainy, monochrome images show about a half-dozen men firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades from a ridge at coalition troops off-camera in the valley below.
According to the voiceover in the video, the ridge is in Afghanistan's Kunar province, about 200 yards from the Pakistan border and close to the Gorparai checkpoint.
Neither the checkpoint nor any other structures are visible in the video excerpts.
The voiceover says the coalition forces were on a reconnaissance mission and returned fire as they tried to break contact and move to a point where a helicopter could pluck them to safety.
The video shows the "anti-Afghan militants" moving to a position identified as inside Pakistan and the impact of a bomb which the voiceover says killed two of them.
Meanwhile, thousands of Pakistani lawyers and political activists are preparing to continue their "long march" from Lahore to Islamabad to call for the reinstatement of judges sacked by Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president. Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the deposed chief justice, was due to lead Thursday's procession from the eastern city to the capital. Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, has also pledged to join the protest. Security was tight for the march, with authorities blocking key facilities in Islamabad with shipping containers and rolls of razor wire and monitoring the route from Lahore with closed-circuit television cameras.
"The lawyers' struggle has entered into a decisive phase," said Munir Malik, a leader of the lawyers' movement.
"We are heartened by the support from the civil society and political parties," he told local television.
Chaudhry, who was given a rousing welcome by a large crowd on his arrival in Lahore overnight, addressed demonstrators on Thursday morning, telling them: "If there's an independent judiciary, the democratic system will work.
"You people have started a revolution which has to reach its logical conclusion," Chaudhry told a crowd of hundreds in the city of Lahore, the half-way point of the rally.
The caravan will pass through different towns during its 270km journey to Islamabad, where it is expected late on Thursday night or early on Friday, lawyers' spokesman Azhar Siddique said.
