A suspected US drone fired two missiles into Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border yesterday, killing at least a dozen people, Pakistani intelligence agency officials said.
The strike on Darpa Kheil village, about 2km from North Waziristan’s main town of Miranshah, was the third such attack by a CIA-operated drone aircraft in Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas this month. Pakistani and US officials believe Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a similar strike in neighbouring South Waziristan on August 5th, although his men have denied that.
An intelligence official in the region said 12 people were killed in the attack targeting a house while another put the death toll at 15 and said most were Afghans.
The first intelligence agency official said the dead included eight women and children.
The house was close to a sprawling madrasa, or religious school, set up by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former veteran Afghan militant commander who is also a senior Taliban leader.
Haqqani was in the past known to be close to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
He is now elderly and his son, Sirajuddin, is commanding his fighters, US and Pakistani security officials say.
While Mehsud has focused his attacks against Pakistan and its security forces, Haqqani’s fighters have concentrated their militant activity in Afghanistan, and are not known for attacks in Pakistan.
Both Pakistani and US officials have said Mehsud was killed in the August 5th attack in his South Waziristan stronghold although neither government has officially confirmed his death. US president Barack Obama said on Thursday “we took out” Mehsud, who was blamed for a wave of bombings across Pakistan, including the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
US ally Pakistan officially objects to the US drone strikes on its soil saying they violate its sovereignty and complicate its efforts to isolate the militants in border regions.