U.S. Hits Pakistan's Tribal Area With Second Airstrike In Two Days - Al Qaeda Safehouse Hit

Good news! For the second day in a row, U.S. airstrikes have hit the NW tribal areas of Pakistan, this time in North Waziristan. Yesterday's airstrike hit in South Waziristan. The strike today was targeting an al Qaeda safehouse - here's the details from The Long War Journal:

A missile strike hit a home near the town of Miramshah in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.
Six people were reported killed in the attack. A woman, a child, and several unidentified "foreigners" were among those killed in the attack. Eight were reported wounded.

The North Waziristan strike is the ninth confirmed cross-border strike by the US against al Qaeda and Taliban safe houses in the tribal areas this year, and the third such attack since Aug. 20. Only ten such strikes were recorded in 2006 and 2007 combined.

Now, as is typical in these strikes, it will take a few days to get those "unidentified foreigners" identified and my bet is they are going to be some fairly high profile al Qaeda. As I have stated many times here, the U.S. has been careful to target al Qaeda in these cross border air strikes and not the Taliban - the U.S. strategy has been that they have a free ticket to go after al Qaeda inside of Pakistan and so far, this strategy has worked and kept the Pakistani government on its heels.

With two strikes in two days, it does appear that the U.S. is getting some damned good intelligence flowing in right now and the fact that we've had back-to-back strikes tells me that indeed we are seeing al Qaeda from Iraq setting up shop in Pakistan.

Now we need to just sit and wait and see just how high value these targets might have been. Keep your fingers crossed.

US hits al Qaeda safe house in North Waziristan


The US has targeted an al Qaeda safe house inside Pakistan's tribal areas for the second day in a row. A missile strike hit a home near the town of Miramshah in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.
Six people were reported killed in the attack. A woman, a child, and several unidentified "foreigners" were among those killed in the attack. Eight were reported wounded.
The North Waziristan strike is the ninth confirmed cross-border strike by the US against al Qaeda and Taliban safe houses in the tribal areas this year, and the third such attack since Aug. 20. Only ten such strikes were recorded in 2006 and 2007 combined.
Four safe houses have been hit in North Waziristan, three have been hit in South Waziristan, and two have been targeted in Bajaur.
Yesterday the US hit an al Qaeda safe house outside of Wana in South Waziristan. Five were reported killed, including two Arab Canadians.
Three senior al Qaeda operatives have been killed in this year's strikes.
Abu Khabab al Masri, al Qaeda's bomb expert and WMD chief, was killed South Waziristan on July 28. Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al Qaeda's external operations chief, was killed in Bajaur on May 14. Abu Laith al Libi, a senior commander in Afghanistan and the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, was killed in North Waziristan on January 28.