Free Republic

The US carried out its second Predator airstrike inside South Waziristan today. Unmanned Predator aircraft killed more than 65 Taliban fighters in a follow-on attack near the headquarters for Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. The Predator strike aircraft fired three Hellfire missiles as Taliban fighters gathered for a funeral of Khog Wali, a leader in Baitullah's army in South Waziristan who was among six Taliban fighters killed in the first US airstrike earlier today. Commander Sangeen, a Taliban commander from Afghanistan, was reported to be among those killed in the strike at the funeral. Predators are said to have fired...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A U.S. drone attacked militants in Pakistan in Tuesday, killing at least 45 of them, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Senior al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders are reported to have met with Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud to advise him to move his group's operations into Afghanistan and halt attacks against the Pakistani state. Several meetings were said to have been held last week after an 11-man delegation of al Qaeda and Taliban heavy hitters arrived in Waziristan to deliver a request from Mullah Omar, the Amir al Mumineen, or the leader of the faithful in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a report in The Nation. The Taliban dispatched Sirajuddin Haqqani, the powerful military commander of the Haqqani Network,...

A New York Times reporter known for making investigative trips deep inside dangerous conflict zones escaped from militant captors after more than seven months in captivity by climbing over a wall, the newspaper said Saturday. David S. Rohde was abducted Nov. 10 along with an Afghan reporter colleague and a driver south of the Afghan capital, Kabul. He had been traveling through Logar province to interview a Taliban commander, but was apparently intercepted and taken by other militants on the way. The Times reported that Rohde and Afghan reporter Tahi Ludin on Friday climbed over the wall of a compound...

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces used aircraft and artillery on Sunday as they stepped up an assault aimed at eliminating Pakistani Taliban commander Baituallah Mehsud. Security forces have secured much of the scenic Swat Valley, northwest of Islamabad, in the past six weeks and the military plans to extend its offensive to al Qaeda ally Mehsud, holed up in the South Waziristan region near the Afghan border. The military action came after Taliban gains raised fears for the future of nuclear-armed Pakistan, a vital ally for the United States as it strives to defeat al Qaeda and stabilize Afghanistan....

Fighter jets bombed Taliban hideouts in South Waziristan on Friday, targeting two compounds, three madrassas and a suspected training camp under the command of Baitullah Mehsud, reported the AFP news agency as – according to military sources – security forces clashed with followers of Baitullah in the region. The military sources also said Friday’s operation “should be read as the formal launch of an offensive against Baitullah”. “Fighter jets on Friday started bombing suspected Taliban hideouts,” an intelligence official in Wana was quoted as saying. The AP news agency quoted intelligence officials as saying that several Taliban had been killed...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani ground troops moved into Taliban-controlled areas Friday and engaged in the first gunbattle of a new offensive in the volatile northwest, as an aerial and artillery bombardment pounded other targets. Officials said Friday's action did not represent the start of a full-scale operation in the tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan, but that most troops were now in place for when the orders came. The coming operation in South Waziristan, along with one winding down in the Swat Valley further north, could be a turning point in Pakistan's yearslong and sometimes halfhearted fight against militancy.

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army launched airstrikes and ferried in tanks and artillery as it confirmed Tuesday that it was preparing a major offensive against insurgents in al-Qaida and the Taliban's safest haven along the Afghan border. The highly anticipated military operation in South Waziristan is seen as a potential turning point in the yearslong and sometimes half-hearted fight against militancy in Pakistan. It could also help curb Taliban attacks on Western forces in neighboring Afghanistan. But the offensive in the lawless tribal region will also be the toughest yet for Pakistan's military, testing both its fighting capability and the government's...

Taliban head 'must be eliminated' The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks Pakistan's army chief has said the head of the Taliban in Pakistan "must be eliminated".General Ashfaq Kayani said Baitullah Mehsud, who has his stronghold in the tribal district of South Waziristan, was "not fighting for Islam". His comments come as a provincial governor said an offensive to target militants was imminent. Neither man said when such an assault might begin. Baitullah Mehsud's group is blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistan has launched a "full-fledged" assault against Taliban in the lawless northwest tribal belt and will continue until all militants are eliminated, the provincial governor said Sunday. Security forces are already locked in a seven-week-long campaign against the insurgents in three other northwest districts, and last week the offensive spread into the semi-autonomous tribal zone along the Afghan border. "The government has launched a full-fledged operation in the tribal areas including Waziristan," Owais Ahmad Ghani, governor of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), told a press conference in Islamabad. "Operations will continue until the elimination of the...

A US missile strike killed five people in the tribal area of South Waziristan here Sunday, report said. The attack hit in the Laddha region of South Waziristan, where Washington alleges Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion are holed up, plotting attacks on Western targets.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least five people Sunday in a tribal region where Pakistan's top Taliban commander is based, intelligence officials said, breaking a lull in such attacks and posing a test for growing anti-Taliban sentiment in the country. The strike came as violence raged elsewhere in the volatile northwest region bordering Afghanistan: a bombing at a market killed at least eight people, while officials said clashes between the Taliban and security forces killed at least 20 militants in a tribal region supposedly cleared of insurgents months ago. ... The U.S. rarely...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan – Suspected militants armed with rockets, grenades and automatic weapons abducted some 400 students, staff and relatives driving away from a boy's school in a troubled tribal region in northwest Pakistan on Monday, police and a witness said. ... Around 30 buses, cars and other vehicles were carrying the students, staff and others when they were stopped along the road by a large group of alleged militants in their own vehicles.

Fighting has broken out in South Waziristan after the Taliban attacked a paramilitary camp and outposts in the lawless tribal agency. The clashes broke out after a Taliban force attacked a camp and checkpoints run by the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the town of Spinkai Raghzai. Reports of casualties range from 25 to 50 Taliban, and seven Frontier Corps were killed in the fighting. The military reported in a press release that 15 Taliban fighters and three troops were killed in the attack on the encampment. "The attack was repulsed successfully, inflicting heavy casualties on militants," the military said. Unnamed...

PAKISTAN is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding. “We’re going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations,” President Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times in an interview. “Swat is just the start. It’s a larger war to fight.” He said Pakistan would need billions of pounds in military assistance and aid for up to 1.7m refugees, the biggest movement of people since the country’s split from India in 1947. To help take...

MIRAN SHAH: The death toll of US drone attack in North Waziristan has reached to 17. Sources said US drone fired two missiles on a madrasah and a vehicle in Khesoor area in Mir Ali sub division on Saturday morning. Five more bodies were recovered from the rubbles of the madrasah that brought the toll to 17. Periodic flights of US drones continued in the area created panic among the locals.

At least eight persons were killed and seven injured in U.S. drone missile attacks at Sararogha area in South Waziristan Agency (SWA). Sources said that the U.S. drones fired four missiles on one house and madrassa at Sararogha area of South Waziristan, which left at least eight killed and seven wounded. The local people helping themselves recovered eight bodies from under the debris, while seven persons were wounded, sources said.

PESHAWAR - At least 10 persons were killed on Wednesday evening when two missiles fired by a US drone hit a house in Kanigoram, a village in South Waziristan Agency. According to initial reports, the house razed to the ground as a result of the strikes, killing around 10 people and injuring several others. The local people have confirmed the report. Agencies add: A local administration official and intelligence officials confirmed the missile strike in South Waziristan. “Those who had been killed in the strike are mostly Taliban militants,” a security official told AFP. “A nearby house was also damaged...

Taliban militants in North Waziristan Monday killed a man they accused of spying for the US forces stationed across the border in Afghanistan, officials said. The mutilated body of a local tribesman was found in Kam Saroobi village near Miranshah, the main town in the tribal agency, local police officer Ghawas Khan told AFP. The man, identified as Mohammad Sadiq, 28, was kidnapped about three months ago, he said. ‘Sadiq’s body had several bullet wounds and his hands and legs were chopped off,’ another police official said. A note found with the body said he was ‘an important US spy,’...

Note: The following text is a quote: Taliban turn children into live bombs No worries: once they take over Pakistan, Obama will sit down and talk with them without preconditions, and straighten everything out. "Taliban turn children into live bombs," from the Daily Times, April 23 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm): TANK: Haneef Mehsud was a normal teenager who spent most of his time hanging out with friends and playing cricket before he was recruited by the Taliban and turned into a suicide bomber. Less than a month after his 17th birthday in late 2008, Haneef killed two soldiers when he...

The US has struck yet again inside Pakistan. The latest attack was aimed at a target in the lawless, Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan. An unmanned Predator strike aircraft fired a Hellfire missile at a vehicle in a bazaar in the town of Gangi Khel near Wana. Four Taliban and al Qaeda operatives are thought to have been killed in the strike and four civilians are said to have been wounded, Geo News reported. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda leaders have been reported killed at this time. The town of Gangi Khel is located in the tribal areas...

A pilotless U.S. drone aircraft fired a missile in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing 13 people including some foreign militants, security officials and residents said. The attack was in the North Waziristan region, a stronghold of al Qaeda and Taliban militants on the Afghan border, in an area 35 km (20 miles) west of the region's main town of Miranshah at about 3 a.m. (6 p.m. EDT on Friday), they said. "The missile hit a house where some guests were staying," one intelligence agency official said, referring to foreign militants. "We have information that 13 people were killed including some...

A suspected US missile strike in north-west Pakistan has killed 13 people, local security officials have said. The apparent drone attack targeted a home in the North Waziristan region near the Afghan border, officials said. The US military routinely does not confirm drone attacks but its forces in Afghanistan are believed to be the only ones in the region with the capability. Pakistan is critical of drone use because, it says, civilians are often killed, fuelling support for militants. It targeted a local tribesman's compound near the region's main town of Miranshah, according to reports. A number of foreign militants...

PESHAWAR: A suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles into a house in Mir Ali in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on Thursday, killing four people and wounding five others, Reuters quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials as saying. It was the second strike in as many days. A missile believed to have been launched by a US drone killed at least seven militants, including foreigners, in South Waziristan on Wednesday, intelligence officials and Taliban sources said. However, senior Pakistani officials on Thursday denied there had been a suspected US missile strike in the region.'There was no missile strike,' said...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – A suspected US missile strike killed up to seven alleged Al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday in an extremist stronghold of northwest Pakistan on the Afghan border, security officials said. At least one vehicle was targeted in the strike in the Makeen area of the semi-autonomous tribal district of South Waziristan, where suspected Afghan and Pakistani Taliban militants are also holed up, local officials said. Initial reports said no high-value targets were believed to have died. "A vehicle carrying six foreign militants was targeted in a single missile attack in Makeen area on the border between North and...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile killed seven people in a Taliban stronghold in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, while a hard-line cleric rattled peace efforts elsewhere by demanding the government launch Islamic courts within two weeks. ... The missiles landed in Murghiban village in the South Waziristan tribal region and also wounded three people, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. At least four of the dead were believed to be foreign militants, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. They said that drones believed to...

ISLAMABAD – Authorities in a Pakistani border province plan to arm villagers with 30,000 rifles and set up an elite police unit to protect a region increasingly besieged by Taliban and al-Qaida militants, an official said Sunday. Stiffer action in the North West Frontier Province could help offset American concern that a peace deal being negotiated in the Swat valley, a Taliban stronghold in the province, could create a haven for Islamist insurgents only 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital. Village militias backed by the United States have been credited with reducing violence in Iraq. Washington is paying...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan agreed on Monday to restore strict Islamist law in the Swat valley to pacify a revolt by Taliban militants, and a suspected U.S. drone fired missiles in the region killing at least 26 people. The decision on Islamic law is likely to draw criticism from the United States and other Western powers fearful that Pakistan is playing into the hands of religious conservatives who sympathize with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The agreement was reached at talks between Islamists and officials of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government in Peshawar on Monday. "After successful...

President Asif Ali Zardari has made a startling admission that Taliban militants are present in “huge amounts of land” in Pakistan and his Government is fighting for the “survival” of the country. “(Taliban) do have a presence in huge amounts of land in our side. Yes, that is the fact,” he said in an interview to CBS television network. Once confined to the country’s tribal area bordering Afghanistan, from where they carried out strikes against the US-led coalition forces in the war-torn country, the Taliban had extended their influence in Pakistan’s inland, Zardari said. “We are aware of the fact......

One of Baitullah Mehsud's key deputies survived an assassination attempt while traveling home yesterday after attending a Taliban leadership meeting in South Waziristan. Mullah Noor Sayyed Mehsud was wounded in a roadside bomb attack that killed another Taliban commander named Abdul Malik Shimankhel and wounded another leader. The bomb was detonated as Noor was returning from a meeting that was held in the town of Makeen. The vehicle was "smashed into pieces" by the blast, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. Makeen is the home town of Baitullah Mehsud, the emir or leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Movement...

ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistan on Tuesday condemned the Taliban's killing of a Polish engineer as "absolutely barbaric", after Warsaw blamed his death on Islamabad's "apathy" towards tackling extremism. Piotr Stanczak, who was abducted in late September in volatile northwest Pakistan, was beheaded at the weekend by his Taliban captors, who then released a graphic video of the execution to several media outlets. Warsaw has confirmed the authenticity of the video and vowed to find Stanczak's killers, who are believed to come from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan's umbrella Taliban organisation which has links to Al-Qaeda. "Officially the ministry of interior has...

Swat is a valley and an administrative district in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) located 160 kilometers from the capital Islamabad. The capital of Swat is Saidu Sharif, but the main town in the Swat Valley is Mingora. With high mountains, green meadows and clear lakes, it is a place of stunning natural beauty, so much so it earned the tag "the Switzerland of Pakistan". All that has changed in the past year; it has now become a hotbed for the Taliban. In the third report in a series of articles exploring Pakistan's tribal areas, Syed Saleem Shahzad visits the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House Friday refused to comment on Pakistani reports that suspected US drones had fired missiles into presumed militant dens in the northwest tribal belt. "As you know I am not going to comment on those matters," spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters despite being repeatedly pressed to discuss the reports.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Two suspected U.S missile attacks killed 18 people Friday in Pakistan just east of the Afghan border, security officials said, the first such strikes since the inauguration of President Barack Obama. At least five victims were identified as foreign militants, an intelligence officer said. The strikes, which hit two districts of the lawless region where al-Qaida militants are known to hide out, are the latest in a barrage of more than 30 since the middle of last year.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Intelligence officials on Friday reported a second suspected US missile attack on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. The officials said there were no immediate confirmations of any casualties in the second attack Friday in Gangi Khel in South Waziristan. An attack earlier Friday killed at least 10 people in North Waziristan. They are the first reported US missile strikes since US President Barack Obama took office. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. The United States rarely acknowledges firing the missiles, which are mostly fired from...

Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/al_qaedas_operations.php Osama al Kini, also known as Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam. The US killed al Qaeda's chief of operations in the New Year's Day missile strike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan, according to a report. The Jan. 1 attack in the town of Karikot in South Waziristan killed Osama al Kini and his senior aide Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, intelligence officials told The Washington Post. Two other unnamed operatives were also killed in the airstrike. Osama al Kini's is an alias for Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, a Kenyan national and a senior al Qaeda...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The head of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and his lieutenant were killed in the past days, a US counterterrorism official told AFP on Thursday, reportedly struck by a missile fired from an unmanned drone. The men are believed to be Kenyan national Usama al-Kini, described as Al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Pakistan, and his lieutenant Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is every reason to believe that these two top terrorist figures are dead," said the source, adding that the pair was killed "within the last week." Officials believe al-Kini was...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive. ... "You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."

The Taleban have ordered the closure of all girls’ schools in the war-ravaged Swat district and warned parents and teachers of dire consequences if the ban is flouted. In an announcement made in mosques and broadcast on radio, the militant group set a deadline of January 15 for its order to be obeyed or it would blow up school buildings and attack schoolgirls. It also told women not to set foot outside their homes without being fully covered. “Female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society,” Shah Dauran, leader of a group that has established control over...

A suspected pilotless American drone has fired two missiles in a border area of Pakistan, killing seven people, Pakistani officials have said. Reports say the missile destroyed a house in South Waziristan. The identity of those killed is not known.

The US has attacked a Taliban safe house in the lawless tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing two people, according to reports from the region. An unmanned Predator aircraft fired at least one Hellfire missile at a Taliban safe house in the Tapi Tool region near Miramshah, the main town in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency, Geo News reported. No senior leaders have been reported killed in the strike. The al Qaeda-linked Haqqani family and Taliban warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadar operate in North Waziristan. The Haqqani Network has a strong presence in Miramshah region of North Waziristan. The Haqqanis control large...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. strike killed six people Thursday on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region believed to be a stronghold of Al Qaeda, two intelligence officials said. The identities of those killed in the attack was not immediately known, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. "At present, local Taliban have surrounded the destroyed house, and they are not letting anybody get close to it," said one of the officials. Citing agents and informants in the field, the officials said six...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan – Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. missile strike has killed three people in a militant stronghold near the Afghan border.

AP ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan's leaders know what's at stake after the terror attack in Mumbai and have acknowledged their duty to evict terrorists and prevent future attacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday. "I found a Pakistani government that is focused on the threat and that understands its responsibilities to respond to terrorism and extremism wherever it is found," Rice said following sessions with the country's powerful army chief and civilian leaders.

India has proof that the Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was behind the deadly Mumbai attacks. Sources have told NDTV that ISI trained the attackers.The names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government, the sources said. The United States is believed to have even more evidence some of which it has shared with India, they said. The US has told Pakistan that they have proof of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba's role and sought the arrest of its chief Hafeez Sayeed. Sources added it is hard to imagine that Pakistan army was not aware...

ISLAMABAD: Maulvi Fazlullah, leader of a banned outfit Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, has been killed, Interior Ministry said here Wednesday. However, spokesman of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has denied the government’s claim.

Rashid Rauf, the suspected ringleader for the 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, has been killed by a U.S. drone in Waziristan, Pakistan. The news comes as a surprise. What is not surprising is that the 27-year-old British terrorist of Pakistani descent was hiding in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan. Or that he was killed by a Predator drone carrying hellfire missiles launched from a U.S. base in Afghanistan and guided by technicians in Nevada. What’s surprising is that it was the Americans who got him...

A fugitive British militant linked to an alleged UK plot to use liquid bombs to blow up transatlantic airliners has been killed in Pakistan, reports say. Pakistani media said Rashid Rauf, born in Birmingham, was killed in a US air strike in North Waziristan, a haven for militants and the Taleban. Mr Rauf, on the run after escaping from a Pakistani jail, was alleged to have helped the group planning the attacks. Three men were convicted in the UK in September of conspiracy to murder. News of the liquid bomb plot paralysed global air travel, prompting authorities to implement stringent...

ISLAMABAD (AFP) – A missile strike by a suspected US drone killed at least three militants early Saturday in a northwestern Pakistani tribal district known as a hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban, officials said. "The strike destroyed a militant hideout in the village of Alikhel in North Waziristan," a senior security official who declined to be named told AFP.

A major Al-Qaeda operative of Arab origin was among six militants killed overnight in a suspected US missile strike in northwest Pakistan, a senior security official told AFP Wednesday. Security sources identified the militant as Abdullah Azam al-Saudi, a senior member in Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. "He was a senior commander of Al-Qaeda and was involved in recruiting and training of fighters," the senior official said. According to US intelligence shared with Pakistan, al-Saudi was the main link between Al-Qaeda's senior command and Taliban networks in the Pakistani border region, an Islamabad-based senior security official said. "He was the...