Posts tagged PAKISTAN
US drone kills 10 in Pakistan
American drones have killed as many as 10 people in the first such missile strike since Barack Obama officially acknowledged the covert CIA programme.
The attack happened in North Waziristan, an area used by members of the Haqqani network to launch operations against international forces across the border in Afghanistan, according to local intelligence officials.
“Two missiles were fired on a compound killing at least 10 in a house believed to be in the use of militants,” said an intelligence official.
Foreign fighters may have been among the dead in the village of Tappi about 10 miles from the main town of Miranshah, he added.
The US had long declined to comment on the use of unmanned drones against militant targets in Pakistan.
The programme is hugely controversial and blamed by Pakistani politicians for turning tribesmen into Jihadis.
However, last month Mr Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after taking office, confirmed that the US was using unmanned aircraft in the skies over Pakistan.
“For the most part, they’ve been very precise precision strikes against al Qaeda and their affiliates, and we’re very careful in terms of how it’s been applied,” he said in a webchat.
Mr Obama’s administration has ramped up the use of drones as ground forces struggle to contain the militant threat in Afghanistan.
Tactics include targeting funeral gatherings and rescuers at the scene of recent attacks, according to research published by the Bureau of Investigative Reporting at the weekend.
The strikes were halted in November last year. Relations between the two allies nosedived in the aftermath of a Nato cross-border raid which killed 24 Pakistani troops.
However, the drones have since restarted their missions even though Pakistan has yet to re-open its roads to Nato supply convoys en route to Afghanistan.
(Source: telegraph.co.uk)
US vacates air base in Pakistan: officials
The United States on Sunday vacated a Pakistani airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers, officials said.
Pakistan’s military said in a statement that the last flight carrying US personnel and equipment had left Shamsi airbase, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, completing a process that began last week.
Islamabad’s fragile alliance with the United States crashed to new lows in the wake of the November 26 NATO air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and which the Pakistan military called a deliberate attack.
The base was widely believed to have been used in covert CIA drone attacks against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda commanders in northwest Pakistan’s tribal areas, which border Afghanistan.
“The control of the base has been taken over by the Army,” the statement said.
A senior security official requesting anonymity earlier told AFP: “The Americans have vacated the Shamsi air base and it has been handed over to the Pakistani security forces.”
Another official in Baluchistan confirmed that the last batch of US officials left in two flights on Sunday.
Following the November air strikes, Pakistan closed two border crossings to Afghanistan to US and NATO supplies and gave American personnel until Sunday to leave Shamsi airbase.
US Ambassador to Islamabad Cameron Munter told a Pakistan television channel last week: “We are complying with the request.”
A security official said the US aircraft left the Pakistani airfield around 3:00 pm (1000 GMT) with the remaining group of 32 US officials and material.
US President Barack Obama last Sunday expressed condolences to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari for the soldier deaths and said the NATO air strikes that killed them were not a “deliberate attack.”
But the incident has rocked Washington’s alliance with its counterterrorism ally Islamabad, though officials say neither country can afford a complete break in relations.
US officials and intelligence analysts have said the covert drone war would not be affected by the closure of the base as Washington could fly Predator and Reaper drones out of air fields in neighboring Afghanistan.
But the Shamsi air base was supposed to be particularly useful for flights hampered by poor weather conditions.
Islamabad has tacitly consented to the covert US drone campaign, which many Pakistanis see as a violation of their country’s sovereignty.
Nearly half of all cargo bound for NATO-led forces runs through Pakistan. Roughly 140,000 foreign troops, including about 97,000 Americans, rely on supplies from outside Afghanistan for the decade-long war effort.
Pakistan has shut off the border over previous incidents, partly to allay popular outrage, but the latest closure had entered a third week.
Islamabad has so far refused to take part in a US investigation into the deadly November air strikes, and decided to boycott the Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month.
(Source: spacewar.com)
US drone raids kill over 120 in 2 days, mostly civilians.
At least 127 people have been killed in separate US assassination drone strikes in Somalia and Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan over the past two days.
On Thursday, 41 people were killed and 33 others were injured when the US military launched a assassination drone attack on the outskirts of Hoomboy town, which is situated in Somalia’s southern region of the Middle Juba.
The aerial attack followed a US assassination strike against Jamame town in Somalia’s southern Jubbada Hoose region. At least 28 people were killed and dozens more were wounded.
Meanwhile, at least three people were killed in a non-UN-sanctioned US assassination drone attack on Pakistan’s northwestern region of North Waziristan on Thursday.
The attack took place in Darpa Khel village, which is located about four kilometers (two miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in the district of North Waziristan.
Local security officials said a drone fired two missiles on a compound in the attack.
On Wednesday, the US remote-controlled assassination drones launched aerial attacks on Qeydar and Marodile villages, which are situated between Guriceel and Balanbale districts in Somalia’s central region of Galguduud.
Somali tribal elders said that at least 38 people were killed and more than 74 people were also injured in the strikes.
Earlier in the day, 20 people were killed and 60 others were injured after a US assassination drone launched a strike on the outskirts of Kismayo, a strategically important port city on Somalia’s Indian Ocean coast located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the Somali capital Mogadishu.
The US says its remote-controlled unmanned assassination drones target militants. However, reports have shown that most of those killed in such aerial attacks are civilians.
(Source: presstv.ir)
