I'm serious - I cannot keep up with the predator drone attacks the CIA is carrying out in North Waziristan! We had three strikes yesterday and now, we have our first of today that killed three targets. I don't want to bore you folks with these countless reports but believe me, this is significant. The messages we are sending are enormous and the carnage we are creating this past week is vast.
From the latest at The Long War Journal:
From the latest at The Long War Journal:
The US continues to hammer terrorist bases in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, striking for the fourth time in the past two days.I have not seen a single communication from any military or intelligence official on what exactly is behind this upsurge in strikes and I doubt we will hear anything, considering who is carrying out these strikes but all I can say is this: KEEP 'EM COMING, BABY!
The latest airstrike, carried out by the unmanned Predator and Reaper attack aircraft, killed three "rebels" in the village of Payekhel in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, according to Dawn. Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan, administers the Data Khel area.
No senior Taliban or al Qaeda commanders have been reported killed in the strike.
The US carried out three other strikes in North Waziristan over the past two days; 32 terrorists have been reported killed in the strikes, including a military commander in the Haqqani Network. Earlier today, a swarm of Predators launched 12 missiles at two compounds in the village of Darga Mandi on the outskirts of Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan. Fourteen terrorists, including members of the so-called Punajbi Taliban, were reported killed.
Latest US Predator strike kills three in North Waziristan
The US continues to hammer terrorist bases in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, striking for the fourth time in the past two days.
The latest airstrike, carried out by the unmanned Predator and Reaper attack aircraft, killed three "rebels" in the village of Payekhel in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, according to Dawn. Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan, administers the Data Khel area.
No senior Taliban or al Qaeda commanders have been reported killed in the strike.
The US carried out three other strikes in North Waziristan over the past two days; 32 terrorists have been reported killed in the strikes, including a military commander in the Haqqani Network. Earlier today, a swarm of Predators launched 12 missiles at two compounds in the village of Darga Mandi on the outskirts of Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan. Fourteen terrorists, including members of the so-called Punajbi Taliban, were reported killed.
On Sept. 14, US Predators fired three missiles at a compound in the village of of Bushnarai in the Shawal area of North Waziristan. Eleven terrorists, including several "foreigners," a term reserved for al Qaeda operatives, were killed in the attack. In the second strike on Sept. 14, four "militants" were killed when Predators hit their vehicle in the village of Qutabkhel.
Pakistani intelligence officials claimed that Saifullah, a Haqqani Network military commander in Afghanistan and a cousin of Siraj, was killed in the Sept. 14 strike in Qutabkhel.
Today's strike is the 13th this month, making September the most active month since the US began hitting targets in Pakistan in 2004. Eleven strikes were carried out in January 2010 after the Taliban and al Qaeda executed a successful suicide attack at Combat Outpost Chapman, which targeted CIA personnel who gathered intelligence used to conduct the Predator campaign in Paksitan. Seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed in the attacks.
With today's strikes, the US has carried out 67 attacks inside Pakistan this year. The US exceeded last year's strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram late last month. In 2008, the US carried out 36 strikes inside Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010.]
Background on the Datta Kehl area
The Datta Khel region has been hit hard by the US, especially in the past several weeks. six out of the last 12 strikes have taken place in Datta Khel. The US has conducted 17 airstrikes in the Datta Khel region this year, or 25 percent of its current total of 67 airstrikes in Pakistan in 2010. Of the 161 strikes in Pakistan since 2004, 22 strikes have taken place in Datta Khel.
The Datta Khel region 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, or al Qaeda's Shadow Army, is known to have a command center in Datta Khel.
Some al Qaeda top leaders have been targeted and killed in Datta Khel. A strike 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 or Lashkar al Zil, 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 this year 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 as 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.
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