Posted on 01/14/2006 12:28:46 PM PST by saquin
Local officials in the Bajaur district, where the airstrike happened, said 18 civilians had been killed in the attack, including six children. But the senior Pakistani official who spoke of Mr. Zawahiri suggested that the death toll was higher, and he said that at least 11 militants had been killed in the attack. Seven of the dead were Arab fighters, and another four were Pakistani militants from Punjab Province, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media.
[...]
On Saturday, the Pakistani security official described some of the intelligence surrounding the airstrike. He said that a dinner at which Mr. Zawahiri was expected had been planned for Thursday night. A local cleric, Maulavi Liaqat, was at the dinner, but he left around midnight, the official said.
After the airstrike, Mr. Liaqat was again at the scene, and he had the bodies of the Arab militants pulled from the rubble and taken away, the security official said. A second cleric, Maulavi Atta Muhammad, took away the Pakistani militants, he said.
A second American official who acknowledged that Mr. Zawahiri had been the target of the strike said it was probably too soon to know for certain whether he had been at the scene.
Damadola has been the focus of previous security operations as well. The Pakistani authorities carried out an operation in the village in April 2004 against a cleric, Maulavi Faqir Mohammad, whom they blamed for giving sanctuary to militants. The maulavi has been at large since, but turned up on Friday and spoke at the funeral of the civilian dead, denouncing the strike, local residents said. He left the area immediately afterward.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well, this is a good sign. We're operating within Pakistan's borders now (like, above-board). Eeeeexcellent. The noose is tightening around ol' OBL.
I think Pakistan will be better off for this action in the long run, however.
President Pervez Musharraf IS a true believer in the war on terror, but many of the senior officers and even the rank-and-file in his armed forces have loyalties to the terrorists. Joint operations are ALWAYS just a little too late, due to advanced warnings. Therefore, the US does what it must and the Pakistani Government officially complains about it.
Good timing. I am certain he had another late night dinner to go to.
We're to the point of reading Zawahiri's social calendar . . .
I'm not. They are openly aiding and abetting terrorists.
Take the baklava, leave the high explosives.
Plan A
Take the baklava, leave the high explosives.
I wish they had waited just a little longer and gotten Zawahiri while he was on the crapper.
So, was the "intended target" just a cover to justify a bombing requested by the Pakistani's?
Could someone take a look at the photo on the left of the
article. The caption is:
"Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border."
Does this look like a missile? If they were targetted by Predators, then I would have thought they'd have been hit by Hellfire missiles. This doesn't look like a Hellfire.
Which one? ;-)
LOL!
Looks like artillery
I think its an arty shell.
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