| Al Jazeera, July 3, 2009 |
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An unmanned US drone aircraft has reportedly carried out a missile strike on Taliban targets near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Missiles struck targets in parts of South Waziristan, in an area controlled by Pakistani Taliban leader and al-Qaeda ally Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistani intelligence officials have said. The missile strike hit a suspected training facility in the village of Montoi in South Waziristan. A suspected militant hide-out in Kokat Khel was also hit. There are believed to be casualties from the attack which took place early on Friday morning. Pakistani aircraft are also reported to have carried out an attack on two targets in North Waziristan in which up to 11 people are said to have been killed. Imran Khan, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Islamabad, said the US military has not responded to the attacks. “The US never ever confirms whether they are behind these suspected drone strikes but popularly, it is believed that this is the kind of attack the US has made within this very troubled area of Pakistan before and they area likely to be behind these attacks,” he said.” “Drone strikes are causing much controversy in Pakistan – many people say they have killed a number of innocent civilians and act as more of a recruitment tool for Pakistan Taliban.” |
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – Taliban militants on Saturday shot down a suspected drone aircraft in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
Residents and a local police official said two drones were flying low over a village in the South Waziristan tribal district when one of them was hit by militant fire.
“We heard the firing by Taliban and then a drone fell down,” tribal police official Israr Khan told AFP.
Another security official said the drone crashed in a forest near a Pakistani border post.
“Apparently a drone has crashed in the nearby forest, we are searching for its wreckage,” a security official told AFP.
The US military — which has been suspected of carrying out attacks by unmanned aircraft in the region — denied it had lost a drone on Saturday.
Pakistan‘s chief military spokesman said the reports of a drone crash were being investigated.
“We have come to know that something has happened there, but we do not have any confirmation,” Major General Athar Abbas told AFP in Islamabad.
“We are further investigating and trying to find out.”
In Washington, Major Marie Boughen, a spokeswoman for US Central Command (Centcom), said: “As far as Centcom goes, all of our drones have been accounted for. So it’s not ours, if there is one that was shot down.”
Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had heard of no such reports, adding that “the Taliban make specious claims all the time.”
More than two dozen missile strikes have been carried out since August 2008, killing more than 200 people, most of them militants.
In January a US drone attack in South Waziristan killed the head of Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan, Kenyan national Usama al-Kini, and his lieutenant, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan.
Another US drone attack in November killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot, as well as an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative, security officials have said.
The strikes, which are not usually confirmed by the US military, have continued since US President Barack Obama took office on January 20. Since then, Pakistani territory has been struck at least four times by suspected US missile strikes.
One strike, on February 16, destroyed an Afghan Taliban camp and killed 26 in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area of Kurram.
In another, at least eight militants were killed on March 1, in a missile strike which destroyed a Taliban hide-out in South Waziristan.
While the Pakistani government has pledged support for the US fight against terrorist threats, the strikes have fuelled anti-American sentiments in Pakistan and particularly in the tribal belt, where Washington says Al-Qaeda and Taliban operate from sanctuaries.
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