http://www.dawn.com/2004/08/06/top5.htm
Ambush and clashes in Shakai leave 11 dead
By Dawn Report
WANA/PESHAWAR, Aug 5: Seven people died and three others suffered injuries in a heavy exchange of fire between security forces and militants following an
ambush on a convoy in the Shakai area of South Waziristan on Wednesday night in which four troops were killed , residents and unofficial reports said.
The convoy was on its way from Shakai to Khamrang, close to the Afghan border, when militants ambushed it with rockets and machine-guns, witnesses said. ISPR
chief Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan denied there was any death on the military side.
"Some soldiers have been wounded during the attack near Shakai, but there is no killing on the army side," he told Dawn by phone from Islamabad. Witnesses in
Wana said that they had seen bodies of four soldiers while six others had been brought in wounded condition.
Official sources said that the military had secured the Khamrang valley from militants last month after heavy clashes and air strikes. The Frontier Corps had since
established its posts in the area, they added.
The security forces responded the ambush with artillery fire from the Brigade Headquarters at Zarai Noor colony and the Wana scouts camp, targeting the suspected
hideouts of militants.
Residents said there was a heavy exchange of fire between security forces and militants that throughout the night. Gunship helicopters kept hovering over the troubled
areas, they added.
Reports said that artillery and mortar shells hit the houses of Malik Nandar Khan and Baota Khan in the Shakai valley. Malik Nandar Khan and Baota Khan's
16-year-old daughter and a 14-year- old nephew were killed. Shells hit another house in the same locality, killing a woman, a girl and two boys.
The names of those killed could not be ascertained. Three wounded tribesmen, one of them in serious condition, were brought to the agency headquarters hospital in
Wana, doctors said.
The ISPR director-general denied that civilians had been killed due to the troops' firing. "Security forces fired very precisely. Forces avoid aerial firing and we do not
think it has happened due to military action," he said, adding that miscreants had fired 'free flight' rockets and missiles which had mostly hit the civilian population.
http://www.dawn.com/2004/08/06/welcome.htm
Rockets fired on army checkpoints in South Waziristan: ISLAMABAD, Aug 06: Rockets were fired on military checkpoints and patrols in overnight attacks in South Waziristan
region after a shootout between suspected terrorists and government troops killed seven people a day earlier, local residents said today. Unidentified men twice attacked the military
positions, one kilometre away from the regional headquarters Wana drawing retaliatory fire from the security forces. There were no reports of casualties in the latest overnight attacks.
(DPA) (Posted @ 15:40 PST)
Interesting background with a clear link to Wana:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3303583
Suspected Al-Qaida Computer Expert "A Genius"
"PA"
Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, the computer expert suspected of sending coded messages to a vast network of al-Qaida operatives, was a quiet and gifted student who was religious but never showed signs of Islamic militancy, his father and a professor said.
They painted a picture of a good-natured young man from a middle-class Karachi neighbourhood with a passion for computers who always stayed out of trouble.
Not anymore.
Khan, who is about 25, was arrested in Lahore on July 13 on suspicion of being a point man who sent e-mails to al-Qaida operatives possibly planning attacks in the United States, Britain, even South Africa.
His arrest led authorities to another major al-Qaida figure, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian with a £14 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people.
Ghailani was arrested in the eastern Pakistani city of Gujrat on July 25.
Khan graduated in 2001 from the prestigious Nadir Eduljee Dinshaw Engineering University in the southern port city of Karachi. He got high marks, and shied away from troublesome students.
Zafar Qasim, a teacher at the university's computer science department, remembered Khan as a "genius student" who graduated near the top of his class.
Khan began his studies at the university in 1997. There are reports he spent time at an al-Qaida training camp in Khost, Afghanistan, though neither his father nor Qasim said they were aware of such a trip. Qasim said Khan never appeared interested in any militant activity, and never missed a class.
A senior intelligence official said Khan married a woman who is the sister of a "top ranking" Taliban leader and that he frequently visited her at their home in Wana, the capital of tribal South Waziristan. It was not clear if they were married after he left home.
The official also said that Khan had been to Britain four times, always on reduced-price tickets he got through his father, a flight attendant with Pakistan International Airlines.
That casts doubt on his father's claim to have severed all ties to his son.
The elder Khan said earlier this week that he has no contact with his son for several years, and indicated there had been a falling out.
"Whatever I know about my son is through newspaper reports. He has not been with me for the last two or three years," said the father, Noor Khan, from the doorway of his home in a middle-class Karachi neighbourhood. "I am trying to get the facts but I am not too bothered."
He said his son had not been a part of any militant group until after he left home, and then quickly closed the door.
The New York Times reported today that Khan was arrested at Lahore airport while picking up a package sent to him by his father.
Khan is about 6 feet tall and fair skinned, Qasim said, and dressed in the traditional Pakistan clothing, rather than the Western clothes preferred by many of the nation's university-age people.
"While here he was a quiet and humble student. I remember him around. There were a few mischievous students but he always remained quiet and concentrated on his study," Qasim said.
He said Khan had a particular interest in a database program designed by Oracle Corporation.
Intelligence officials have said that a computer seized from Khan contained photographs of Heathrow airport, as well as pictures of underpasses that run beneath several buildings in London, believed to be possible targets for attacks he was involved in planning against them. He is also accused of sending coded e-mails to al-Qaida operatives.
Khan is said to have been in contact with Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi, believed to be a senior al-Qaida figure in Britain, who was allegedly plotting to attack London's Heathrow airport. Al-Hindi also used the code name of Bilal, according to reports published in Britain.
Khan also led Pakistani security forces to Ghailani and two South African men arrested with him. The South Africans had maps of several cities in their home country and are believed to have been planning attacks there, intelligence and police officials say.
Qasim, the professor, said he was shocked to learn of Khan's arrest.
"I did not find him to be leaning in any peculiar direction," Qasim said. "He was a little religious and had a short beard ... but I never saw him engage in the activity of any (militant) student organisation."