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Pakistan suspects US drone strikes killed at least seven near militant hideout
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Two suspected US drones fired missiles at militant hideouts in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing at least seven fighters, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
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The attacks took place in the same area where the Pakistani army has been mounting an air-and-ground operation against Pakistani Taliban insurgents who are fighting against the government in order to set up a sharia state in Pakistan.
Areas along Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan are home to a range of domestic and foreign militants, and the authorities have been under pressure to do more to eliminate the insurgents who cross into Afghanistan and stage attacks there. Pakistani Taliban are based on both sides of the border.
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On Friday, intelligence officials said both of the latest air strikes took place in Pakistan’s remote North Waziristan region, targeting Uzbek and Punjabi Taliban hideouts.
Pakistan has stepped up operations against the Taliban in response to a 16 December school massacre in which more than 130 children were killed, but details of its efforts are sketchy as independent journalists are not allowed in North Waziristan.
Pakistani security forces said on Friday they had killed a Taliban commander who allegedly facilitated the Peshawar school massacre, which left 150 people dead in the country’s worst ever terror attack, officials said Friday.
Named only as “Saddam”, the militant was killed on Thursday night in a gunfight with security forces in the restive Khyber tribal area, which borders the northwestern city of Peshawar where the horrific school attack took place.
“Commander Saddam was a dreaded terrorist, who was killed in an exchange of fire with the security forces in Jamrud town of Khyber tribal region,” local administration official Shahab Ali Shah told a press conference in Peshawar. “Six of his accomplices were injured and arrested.”
US drone strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan and the government is officially against them, even though many senior Pakistani Taliban commanders have been killed in such attacks in past years. US officials almost never publicly comment on the country’s drone policy in Pakistan.
