US missile strike kills five in South Waziristan: officials

MIRAMSHAH: A US missile strike targeting a militant compound killed five rebels in Pakistan’s tribal badlands near the Afghan border on Friday, security officials said.

The strike took place in Ghwakhwa area, 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan tribal region, where the military launched an operation two years ago.

“A US drone fired three missiles on a militant compound, killing five rebels,” a senior security official in the area told AFP.

Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the “identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known”.

Friday’s attack was the ninth to be reported in Pakistan’s tribal areas, close to the Afghan border, since US commandos killed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in a raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

The Pakistani parliament has called for an end to US drone strikes and said there must be no repeat of the operation that killed bin Laden, despite the fact that President Barack Obama has reserved the right to act again.

The raid also rocked Pakistan’s seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.

The drone strikes are hugely unpopular among the general public, who are deeply opposed to the government’s alliance with Washington, and inflame anti-US feeling, which has heightened further after the bin Laden raid.

But US officials say the missile strikes have severely weakened Al-Qaeda’s leadership and killed high-value targets including the former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

The United States does not confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy them in the region.

Missile attacks doubled in the area last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010, compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the attacks have been concentrated in North Waziristan, the most notorious Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastion in Pakistan, where the United States wants the Pakistan military to launch a ground offensive as soon as possible.

Local newspaper The News reported this week that Pakistan had decided to launch a “careful and meticulous” military offensive in North Waziristan after a recent visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad.

But Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, the commander supervising all military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told reporters on Wednesday: “We will undertake operation in North Waziristan when we want to.” “We will undertake such an operation when it is in our national interest militarily,” the general said, describing North Waziristan as “calm and peaceful as it was weeks ago”.

Under US pressure to crack down on militants havens on the Afghan border, Pakistan has been fighting for years against homegrown militants in much of the tribal belt, dubbed a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda. – AFP

Update:

Deadly US drone targeted Ilyas Kashmiri
(9 killed)

ISLAMABAD: A US drone attack that killed nine militants in Pakistan targeted top al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, local officials said Saturday without being able to confirm whether he was present.

Kashmiri, 47, is considered one of the most feared operational commanders of the network that Osama bin Laden founded and has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks on western targets, as well as in India and Pakistan.

The United States has put out a $5 million reward — the maximum for any most-wanted target — for any information that might help locate him.

Pakistani officials said nine militants were killed in the US missile strike on Friday at a compound in the Ghwakhwa area of South Waziristan, a stronghold of al-Qaeda-allied Taliban despite a sweeping Pakistani offensive in 2009.

“This attack targeted the Ilyas Kashmiri group but we still don’t know whether he was present or not at the time of the attack,” a senior local administration official told AFP by telephone on condition of anonymity.

“Nine militants were killed in last night’s drone strike,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP.

“All those killed were Kashmiri’s fighters but informers told us that the dead bodies were badly mutilated and that it was not possible to recognise any of them,” the official added.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, asked during a visit to the city of Multan about reports of Kashmiri’s killing, said he had “no information”.

Regional and anti-terrorism experts say that Kashmiri, leader of banned Pakistani group Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HJI) is one of al Qaeda’s main operational commanders.

He has been blamed for multiple attacks in Pakistan, including the recent May 22 siege on a naval air base in Karachi.

Counter-terrorism officials believe he was the main coordinator of a terror plot targeting Britain, France, Germany and the United States, which was apparently in the early stages when detected by intelligence agencies in 2010.

Two intelligence officials in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, also confirmed that those killed on Friday were all Kashmiri’s fighters.

But a spokesman for Pakistan’s umbrella Taliban faction said Kashmiri was “alive and safe”, and had not been present at the time of the strike.

“Only our local comrades died in this drone strike,” Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Share

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.