SUICIDE attackers detonated a truck bomb yesterday outside a luxury hotel in Peshawar that US officials were in negotiations to make into an American consulate, officials said.

Pakistan has temporarily suspended oil tankers and trucks carrying sealed containers from using the Khyber Pass, a key passage to Afghanistan, an official said today, a move which will probably have an impact on supplies heading to Nato troops.

Harsh winter weather is threatening to cut off more than 300,000 survivors of last year’s killer South Asian earthquake from critical food supplies, the United Nations warned today, as the season’s first snows began to fall.