Sweeeeet! U.S. Predator Attack Inside Pakistan Kills 15 Taliban/Al Qaeda

This is nothing short of bloody awesome! I'm not exactly sure why it is the Montreal Gazette here that seems to be reporting this first but hell, I'll take it! A "suspected" U.S. predator drone (UAV) has hit a Taliban training camp inside of Pakistan and killed 15 Taliban/al Qaeda jihadists and wounded upwards of 50. I ask you...is that not the best news you've heard all day? Here's some of the details:

A suspected U.S. missile strike destroyed a Taliban training camp in northwest Pakistan, killing 15 militants and al-Qaida operatives, as well as wounding another 50, security officials said Friday.
Two missiles fired by an unmanned drone pulverized the den in the tribal area of Kurram, one of seven such semi-autonomous regions near Pakistan's porous border with Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are battling Taliban fighters.
"Fifteen militants were killed and 50 wounded," a senior security official told AFP

There seems to be some disagreement who exactly was killed in the attack:

He had initially said at least seven militants, including "foreigners" — a reference to al-Qaida — were killed.
No high-value targets were believed to have died, the official added.
Another security official said most of the dead were Afghan Taliban.
"The training centre was run by local Taliban commander Fazal Saeed and training was underway at the time of the strike," the official added.

I don't have much doubt that there were "foreign" fighters in this camp - but foreign can mean either al Qaeda Arabs or Chechen jihadists - I'm guessing this was mostly Taliban however and whatever flavor they all were, it's good to see them dead and gone.

The real value of this kind of hit is in the impact that it creates when the word spreads throughout the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan - there can't be ANY group of these jihadists anywhere in Pakistan that feels safe right now, and that gnawing sense of doom is worth its weight in gold.

Somewhere there is an American who was at the controls of this UAV - and I would personally like to thank him/her for good shooting! American UAV's ROCK!

Suspected U.S. missile strike kills 12 in Pakistan: Officials


ISLAMABAD - A suspected U.S. missile strike destroyed a Taliban training camp in northwest Pakistan, killing 15 militants and al-Qaida operatives, as well as wounding another 50, security officials said Friday.
Two missiles fired by an unmanned drone pulverized the den in the tribal area of Kurram, one of seven such semi-autonomous regions near Pakistan's porous border with Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are battling Taliban fighters.
"Fifteen militants were killed and 50 wounded," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. He had initially said at least seven militants, including "foreigners" — a reference to al-Qaida — were killed.
No high-value targets were believed to have died, the official added.
Another security official said most of the dead were Afghan Taliban.
"The training centre was run by local Taliban commander Fazal Saeed and training was underway at the time of the strike," the official added.
Taliban militants sealed off the area and retrieved bodies from the rubble of the building after the strike late Thursday.
More than 30 such strikes have killed over 330 people since August 2008, shortly before key Washington ally President Asif Ali Zardari was elected.
The U.S. military as a rule does not confirm drone attacks but the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy drones in the region.
Thursday's attack was the fifth missile strike blamed on unmanned U.S. aircraft since President Barack Obama came to power, dashing Pakistani hopes that the new administration would abandon the policy.
Islamabad has repeatedly protested to Washington that drone strikes violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the 160 million people of the nuclear-armed Islamic nation.