No sooner had I posted the story of the U.S. drone strike on al Qaeda in Yemen when this story from DAWN popped up about U.S. drones taking out 5 Taliban/al Qaeda in South Waziristan this morning! Yessssss!
It appears to me that we must have gotten some juicy intelligence about some big fish in South Waziristan because it is a bit unusual to see these strikes taking place there as opposed to hitting North Waziristan which is teeming with both al Qaeda and Taliban.
From the report:
At least five suspected militants were killed as a US drone bombarded a vehicle with missiles in the tribal area of South Waziristan agency on Tuesday, security officials said.
The attack took place in the remote Drey Nishtar area of South Waziristan along the Afghan border, part of the semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt that Washington considers a global hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reportedly fired two missiles at the pickup truck carrying the five passengers. The vehicle caught fire, causing the bodies to be burned and making identification difficult.
One security official said the far-flung and mountainous Drey Nishtar lies on the Afghan border where militants try to cross into Afghanistan to attack US-led Nato troops who have been fighting a Taliban insurgency for 10 years.
“A US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle. Five militants have been killed,” a second Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
You gotta love when our drones take out a vehicle because the kill rate is so much higher - it's also amazing to me to see the level of intelligence ....we probably watched these clowns for a very long time, watched them get into a vehicle and when they were well on their way to their next stop......BOOM! It's nice to know that the bad guys in both of the Waziristans are now watching the skies and crapping their pants.
US drone strike kills five in South Waziristan
PESHAWAR: At least five suspected militants were killed as a US drone bombarded a vehicle with missiles in the tribal area of South Waziristan agency on Tuesday, security officials said.
The attack took place in the remote Drey Nishtar area of South Waziristan along the Afghan border, part of the semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt that Washington considers a global hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reportedly fired two missiles at the pickup truck carrying the five passengers. The vehicle caught fire, causing the bodies to be burned and making identification difficult.
One security official said the far-flung and mountainous Drey Nishtar lies on the Afghan border where militants try to cross into Afghanistan to attack US-led Nato troops who have been fighting a Taliban insurgency for 10 years.
“A US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle. Five militants have been killed,” a second Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
President Barack Obama in January confirmed for the first time that US drones target militants on Pakistani soil, but American officials do not discuss details of the covert programme.
The attacks fuel anti-American resentment in Pakistan, whose relations with the US nosedived over the covert raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May and air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
In Britain, a law firm said Sunday it would sue Foreign Secretary William Hague on behalf of a Pakistani man, whose father was killed by a drone strike, over claims that British intelligence was used to assist in attacks.
Lawyers will claim that civilian intelligence officers who pass on intelligence are not “lawful combatants”, therefore cannot claim immunity from criminal law and could be liable as “secondary parties to murder”.
They will also argue that the immunity clause does not apply as Pakistan is not currently involved in an “international armed conflict”.
The New America Foundation think-tank in Washington says drone strikes have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in Pakistan in the past eight years.
US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed that Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders privately supported US drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the US alliance is hugely unpopular.
Islamabad is now reviewing its US alliance in the wake of the November deaths and has kept its Afghan border closed to Nato supply convoys since then.
It ordered US personnel to leave the Shamsi air base in southwestern Pakistan, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone programme, and is thought likely to impose taxes on convoys if it reopens the Afghan border.
According to an AFP tally, 45 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2009, the year Obama took office, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011. Tuesday’s attack was the ninth reported so far this year.
In North Waziristan, gunmen on Tuesday shot dead the top government official in the town of Mir Ali, Azmat Jamal, after barging into his office, Pakistani security officials said.
“Five gunmen managed to enter inside his office and opened fire on him, he was taken to hospital where he died,” one official told AFP.
“Attackers also hurled hand grenade before fleeing the scene,” a second official told AFP.
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