I'm convinced that if you are a jihadi in North Warziristan, Friday is your worst day of the week as Friday always seems to be THEE day for offing these bastards with hellfires.
Anyway, we're usually pleased to get 17 al Qaeda/Taliban in FOUR drone strikes but to do it in one strike is nothing short of amazing. I'm guessing there will be some toasts made tonight amongst the CIA. Good job, guys!
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
US drones kill 17 'militants' in North Waziristan strike
The US killed 17 suspected "militants" in a strike in an area of the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan that is known to host la Qaeda's top leaders.
The remotely piloted Predators or the more heavily armed Reapers fired several missiles at a compound in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, according to Retuers. Pakistani officials told Dawn that 17 people, all "suspected militants," were killed in the strike.
The target of today's strike has not been disclosed. No senior al Qaeda or Taliban leaders have been reported killed in the strike.
The Datta Khel area is administered by Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan. Bahadar provides shelter to top al Qaeda leaders as well as terrorists from numerous Pakistani and Central Asian terror groups.
Datta Khel is a known hub of Taliban, Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda activity. While Bahadar administers the region, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and allied Central Asian jihadi groups are also based in the area. The Lashkar al Zil, al Qaeda's Shadow Army, is known to have a command center in Datta Khel.
Datta Khel serves as a command and control center for al Qaeda's top leaders, and some of them have been targeted and killed there. A strike in Datta Khel on Dec. 17, 2009, targeted Sheikh Saeed al Saudi, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law and a member of al Qaeda's Shura Majlis, or executive council. Al Saudi is thought to have survived the strike, but Abdullah Said al Libi, the commander of the Shadow Army, and Zuhaib al Zahibi, a general in the Shadow Army, were both killed in the attack.
But the most significant attack in Datta Khel took place on May 21, 2010, and resulted in the death of Mustafa Abu Yazid, a longtime al Qaeda leader and close confidant of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri.
Yazid served as the leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the wider Khorasan, a region that encompasses portions of Pakistan, Iran, and several Central Asian states. More importantly, Yazid was al Qaeda's top financier, which put him in charge of the terror group's purse strings. He served on al Qaeda's Shura Majlis, or top decision-making council. Yazid also was closely allied with the Taliban and advocated the program of embedding small al Qaeda teams with Taliban forces in Afghanistan, a practice well-established in the country now.
Despite the known presence of al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations in North Waziristan, and requests by the US that action be taken against these groups, the Pakistani military has indicated that it has no plans to take on Bahadar or the Haqqani Network, the other major Taliban group based there. Bahadar and the Haqqanis are considered "good Taliban" by the Pakistani military establishment as they do not carry out attacks inside Pakistan. Yet Bahadar, the Haqqanis, and other Taliban groups openly carry out attacks in Afghanistan.
Background on the US strikes in Pakistan
Today's strike is the fifth in Pakistan since June 4, when the US killed Abu Yahya al Libi, one of al Qaeda's top leaders, propagandists, and religious figures. Abu Yahya was killed in a strike on a compound in the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali, another al Qaeda haven. Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkmen fighters belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were reportedly among the 14 terrorists killed along with Abu Yahya.
Al Qaeda has since released two videos of Abu Yahya; both appear to have been produced sometime after November 2011. The first video, which appears to have been taped long ago, addressed the Syrian revolution. Abu Yahya spoke about US ethics in the second video. Abu Yahya did not address reports of his death in either video. [See Threat Matrix reports, As Sahab releases video of Abu Yahya al Libi; Al Qaeda suggests Abu Yahya al Libi is alive, promises video; and Al Qaeda releases another tape from Abu Yahya al Libi.]
The US has carried out 26 strikes in Pakistan so far this year. Eight of the strikes have taken place since the beginning of June; six occurred in North Waziristan and two were in South Waziristan. [For data on the strikes, see LWJ reports, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2012; and Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2012.]
The drone program was scaled back dramatically from the end of March to the beginning of the fourth week in May. Between March 30 and May 22, the US conducted only three drones strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas as US officials attempted to renegotiate the reopening of NATO's supply lines, which were closed from the end of November 2011 until July 3. Pakistan closed the supply lines following the Mohmand incident in November 2011, in which US troops killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani soldiers were killed after they opened fire on US troops operating across the border in Kunar province, Afghanistan.
A US intelligence official involved in the drone program in the country told The Long War Journal on May 28 that the strikes would continue now that Pakistan has refused to reopen NATO's supply lines for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
In addition to Abu Yahya, two other high-value targets have been killed in the strikes this year. A Jan. 11 strike in Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, killed Aslam Awan, a deputy to the leader of al Qaeda's external operations network.
And on Feb. 8, the US killed Badr Mansoor, a senior Taliban and al Qaeda leader, in a strike in Miramshah's bazaar. Mansoor ran training camps in the area and sent fighters to battle NATO and Afghan forces across the border, and linked up members of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen with al Qaeda to fight in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden described Mansoor as one of several commanders of al Qaeda's "companies" operating in the tribal areas. He was later promoted to lead al Qaeda's forces in the tribal areas.
The program has been scaled down from its peak in 2010, when the US conducted 117 strikes, according to data collected by The Long War Journal. In 2011, the US carried out just 64 strikes in Pakistan's border regions.
So far this year, the US has launched one more strike in Pakistan (26) against al Qaeda and allied terror groups than it has in Yemen (25) against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2011, however, the US launched only 10 airstrikes in Yemen, versus 64 in Pakistan.
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