Re: 20 terrorists killed by US drone in Waziristan
i actually read the poll has climbed to 32. And that is a very bayhuda way of getting rid of khas without even bothering to give the neighbourhood a warning and with out proving a solid case. it is so sad that Pakistanis show little interest in lives of fellow pakistanis. Here is another look at it in the news today.
*Villagers say US drone fired two missiles; ISPR claims blasts caused during bomb-making
*By By Rahimullah Yusufzai & Mohammad Yasin
PESHAWAR/MIRANSHAH: Thirty persons were killed and scores of others sustained injuries on Tuesday when a Madrassa and two adjacent houses were hit by missiles in the Dattakhel area of North Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan, villagers and intelligence officials said.
The Reuters news agency quoted unnamed officials as saying that at least 32 people were killed in the attack The death toll could be higher as tribesmen from Dattakhel who reached Miranshah, headquarters of North Waziristan, bought 24 wooden coffins in the bazaar and ordered another 24. The tribesmen searched all the markets in Miranshah looking for caskets and bought the readily available 24 coffins.
Quoting villagers in Mami Noma Manzarkhel, the remote village that was attacked with missiles, tribal and militants sources in Miranshah said 50 students and their teachers were present in the Binori Madrassa when it was hit and all of them were killed or injured. They said casualties also occurred in the adjoining two houses. One report said 25-30 people lost their lives in the attack. The villagers reported seeing a drone that had flown from Afghanistan around 10 a.m. on Tuesday firing two missiles at the seminary and flattening its structure.
Earlier, military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad, who is also Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), claimed that several casualties occurred when bombs being made by militants accidentally exploded. He said the place where the explosions took place was a training facility.
In the past also, the military authorities have explained similar occurrences as a consequence of explosions accidentally caused by bomb-makers. One notable case of similar nature was the attack on a house a couple of years ago in which alleged al-Qaeda figure Hamza Rabia was killed along with some local tribesmen in a village near Mir Ali, also in North Waziristan. The government insisted on that occasion also that Hamza Rabia and the tribesmen were killed while making bombs but a tribal journalist, Hayatullah, proved it wrong by taking pictures of shrapnels of missiles fired by a US drone while attacking the al-Qaeda hideout. Hayatullah was soon afterwards abducted and his bullet-ridden body was found five months later.
No claim about presence of any “high-value target” in the alleged training facility was made this time by the military authorities. The US military in keeping with its past practices didn’t comment on the incident.
Following Tuesday’s incident, an intelligence official in North Waziristan told The News and other media organisations that three missiles fired from Afghanistan hit the training facility for militants and killed 17 people. Requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, he said another 15 persons were wounded in the attack. He declined to provide details whether the missiles were fired by the pilotless US and CIA-owned Predator planes that are equipped with the fairly accurate Hellfire missiles.
Across the border from the targetted Pakistani village is Afghanistan’s Paktika province, where US-led coalition jets bombed a compound containing a mosque and Madrassa on Monday and killed several people, including seven children aged 10 to 16. Most of those killed in the Madrassa in North Waziristan Tuesday were also stated to be young religious students.
The remoteness of the Mami Noma Manzarkhel village, which was written as Mami Rogha in dispatches by wire services, made it difficult to get details of the attack. The few telephones in the area, located around 75 kilometres west of Miranshah, were not working. The targetted village, sited 16 kilometres from Dattakhel town in the Sher Ali Ghundai area, is close to the border with Afghanistan. The mud-built Binori Madrassa was located at some distance from the village.
It was intriguing to note that US helicopters had reportedly dropped leaflets in the border areas of both North Waziristan and South Waziristan last Saturday warning the tribes living there not to launch attacks in Afghanistan. The leaflets in Pashto language threatened them with attacks involving chemical weapons if attacks across the Pak-Afghan border were not stopped and military training camps in Waziristan were not closed. A further provocation were pictures of B-52 bombers printed on the leaflets as if threatening the Pakistani tribes that they would be bombed by these feared US fighter planes.
Our Parachinar correspondent adds: Coalition forces in the neighbouring Afghanistan on Tuesday violated Pakistan’s airspace six times by flying over the Kurram tribal agency that created panic among the residents.
The coalition forces had called for air support after an attack on their military camps in Afghanistan’s Danda Pathan area by unknown assailants which was followed by heavy fighting. There were reports that nine missiles were fired on the US camp. Two of their planes entered Pakistan’s Kurram Agency for at least six times and continued flying over the agency for several minutes.
