US drone kills 18 in North Waziristan: officials

[david blain]

ISLAMABAD: American missiles slammed into suspected militant hideouts close to the Afghan border Friday, killing 18 suspected militants, Pakistani officials said, just a day after the government summoned an American diplomat to protest the drone strikes in the tribal areas.

The strikes Friday were the fourth attack in the span of a week, as well as the most deadly. The drone campaign has been a source of friction between the US and Pakistan, which sees the strikes as an infringement on its sovereignty. The US maintains the campaign is vital to combating militants, including al Qaeda, which it says operates in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region near the Afghan border.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned a US diplomat to protest the recent drone strikes.

“A senior US diplomat was called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and informed that the drone strikes were unlawful, against international law and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. It was emphatically stated that such attacks were unacceptable,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The diplomat was not identified.

One day later, Pakistani intelligence officials said American drone-fired missiles hit three militant hideouts in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal areas.

The officials said each of the three compounds was hit by two missiles. Militants often use these hideouts when they are crossing into Afghanistan, the officials said.

Fourteen people were also injured in the attack.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. There was no immediate comment from the US.

Drones ‘illegal, unproductive’, says FO

Foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan criticised Friday’s strikes during his weekly press briefing in Islamabad.

“We regard these strikes as illegal and unproductive,” he said.

“These attacks also violate our sovereignty, territorial integrity and are in contravention of international laws.”

The surge in drone attacks this week has come after reports of a thaw in Islamabad’s difficult ties with the United States following a visit to Washington by Pakistan’s spymaster, Lieutenant General Zaheer ul-Islam, earlier this month.

Islam’s talks with his CIA counterpart were said to have focused on drone strikes.

Khan said Pakistan was working with the US leadership on the drone issue.

“We are working on various proposals and hope to come up to a mutually acceptable solution,” he said.

But he refused to discuss the nature of proposals, saying it was difficult for him to share these with the media.

North Waziristan focus

Islamabad’s protest followed a string of three drone attacks earlier this week.

On Saturday, five allies of a powerful warlord, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, were said to have been killed when a US drone struck their hideout. On Sunday American drones fired a flurry of missiles into the Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing 10 suspected militants. On Tuesday, missiles targeting a vehicle killed five more suspected militants.

All the strikes this week came in North Waziristan, one of the last areas of the tribal region in which the Pakistani military has not conducted any operations against militants. The US has pushed repeatedly for Pakistan to open an offensive there, and US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently said Pakistani authorities would start a campaign there soon. So far there are few signs on the ground of a large-scale offensive.

Pakistan has repeatedly criticised American drone strikes in its territory, calling them counter-productive.

Attacks by unmanned US aircraft are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, which says they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment, but American officials are said to believe the attacks are too important to give up.

Many people in Pakistan believe they mostly kill civilians. The US, however, shows no sign that it is willing to end or curtail the contentious program.

 

[David James]

Pakistan: US drone-fired missiles slam into hideouts, kill 18 suspected militants - The Washington Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-kill-18-in-pakistan.html

If I am not wrong it was yesterday when Pak govt. acted tough and said that these are sovereignty violation and taken up the matter with the Americans.

What US have replied was not known until now.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Militant Leader Believed Dead in Pakistan Drone Strike

By DECLAN WALSH and ERIC SCHMITT, Published: August 24, 2012

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A volley of C.I.A. drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt early Friday killed at least 18 people, security officials said, capping a week of missile attacks that have renewed tensions between Pakistan and the United States, but may have killed a major militant leader.

Senior American officials said they had strong indications that Badruddin Haqqani, the operational commander of the Haqqani network, which is responsible for some of the most spectacular assaults on American bases and Afghan cities in recent years, was killed in a drone strike this week.

“There are indications that Haqqani has met his demise,” a senior United States official said in Washington on Friday. He said that officials were waiting to sift through evidence, including information on jihadist Web sites, before they could be certain that Mr. Haqqani had been killed.

The caution stems from previous erroneous claims by American and Pakistani officials about militant deaths in Waziristan, a notoriously difficult place to get reliable information. But if confirmed, Mr. Haqqani’s death would be a major benefit to the military coalition in Afghanistan.

Thought to be in his mid-30s, Mr. Haqqani runs the Haqqani network’s day-to-day militant operations, handles high-profile kidnappings and manages its lucrative smuggling operations, according to a recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent, privately financed research and educational institution at West Point.

He is considered second in seniority to the Haqqani network’s leader, his older brother Sirajuddin Haqqani. Both men are believed to direct operations in Afghanistan from their haven in North Waziristan, where they have allied with local warlords and enjoy longstanding clan ties.

In August 2011, Afghan intelligence released intercepts of Badruddin Haqqani directing a daring assault on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel; three years before that he held a reporter for The New York Times, David Rohde, hostage.

“Badruddin Haqqani has been at the center of coalition attacks in Afghanistan as well as mischief in Pakistan,” said the American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the subject.

By Friday evening, reports of Mr. Haqqani’s death were circulating in Pakistan’s tribal belt. In Washington, the C.I.A., which carries out armed drone missions in Pakistan, declined to comment, as did the White House.

The last major successful drone strike in Pakistan was the assassination of the Al Qaeda deputy leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in June.

Early Friday, C.I.A. drones fired at least six missiles at three locations in the Shawal Valley, destroying mud-walled compounds and at least two vehicles, said two Pakistani security officials and a local Taliban commander. Among the 18 people reported to have been killed was Emeti Yakuf, a senior leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group from western China whose members are Chinese Uighur Muslim militants.

On Thursday, the Pakistani Foreign Office summoned an American Embassy official to officially protest the sudden surge in drone strikes — the eighth such protest issued by Pakistan over the past 12 months, according to a senior Pakistani official.

Although Pakistan and the United States patched up their differences over NATO supply routes in July, the drone campaign is a major impediment to a resumption of normal relations.

Pakistan’s military has proposed that it carry out the strikes itself using its fleet of American-built F-16 warplanes. The Obama administration has rejected those demands, saying the covert campaign offers the most effective tool against militants in an area where the Pakistani state has largely lost control.

Tensions are complicated by the Haqqani network, which American officials say has uncomfortably close ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. The ISI denies any operational link to the group.

Under pressure from Congress, the Obama administration must decide by Sept. 9 whether to declare the Haqqani network a terrorist entity — a move that could further complicate relations between the two countries.

But most of the Haqqani leadership, including Mr. Haqqani, his brothers and uncles, have already been individually designated as “global terrorists.” In May 2011 the State Department said Mr. Haqqani “helps lead insurgents and foreign fighters in attacks against targets in southeastern Afghanistan.”

Another American official, who also insisted on anonymity, said Mr. Haqqani was believed to have died in a “signature” strike — an attack on militants based on their pattern of activity and location, rather than intelligence about any one individual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-kill-18-in-pakistan.html

 

[SHAMK9]

there is a huge difference between 'believed' and what actually happened, i also believe that flying unicorns exist but that doesnt makes it the truth.
Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence

 

[Juice]

there is a huge difference between 'believed' and what actually happened, i also believe that flying unicorns exist but that doesnt makes it the truth.
Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence

Someone's @ss is burning...what's wrong...your hero get a booboo?