US drone kills dozen in Pakistan

A raid by a US drone in northwest Pakistan has killed at least 12 suspected opposition fighters, Pakistani officials have said.

The attack took place on Sunday in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, close to the Afghanistan border.

"The target was a militant compound," a senior military official said of the raid, which occurred about 40km southeast of Miranshah, the primary town in North Waziristan.

Another official added: "The drones are apparently tracking and targeting Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, whose presence is frequently reported in the area."

Conflicting reports have emerged over the past few days of Mehsud's death.

On Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban released an audio recording in which a voice purporting to be that of Mehsud said that he had not been killed in a US bomb attack last Thursday.

About 40 opposition fighters are said to have been killed by drone strikes since last Thursday, as Washington steps up its campaign to counter the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The latest attack is the 10th US drone strike this year. The use of the pilotless aircraft has been criticised by Pakistani officials for causing civilian casualties, as well as for breaching the country's sovereignty.

Barack Obama, the US president, has put Pakistan at the centre of his policy to target the Taliban and al-Qaeda, seeing lawless tribal areas of western Pakistan as a safe haven for such fighters.

Al Jazeera

Muslim Brotherhood Update

• The Code Pink organization has placed ads on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, including one that asks readers to “join us in cleansing our country.”

• An Al-Qaeda bodyguard killed by a U.S. drone attack in North Waziristan is the son of a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Jordan.

• The new Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America has a history of involvement with other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations.

• Seven senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan have been charged with corruption over their management of Islamic charities.

World Threats

Pakistan drone attack 'kills many'

A suspected US drone attack has killed at least 18 people and injured 14 others in Pakistan's northwest tribal belt, near the Afghan border, security officials say.

The attack took place in Pasalkot village in North Waziristan, a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

Two missiles were fired at a compound on Thursday, where Hakimullah Mehsud, (pictured), the Pakistani Taliban chief, was believed to have been.

"We had information that he was around there. We're checking on whether he was killed," a Pakistani security official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters news agency.

However, a Taliban spokesman told Pakistan's Dawn TV that Mehsud was safe and had left minutes before the assault.

Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Pakistan, said the US were likely to view the operations as a "huge success".

"The use of drone strikes in Pakistan is highly controversial but there's no sign of the Americans stopping them any time soon," he said.

"They will regard this latest operation as a huge success - targeting and killing what they say were a number of militants."

Mehsud took over as leader of the Pakistani Taliban five months ago, after Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor, was killed in a similar US drone attack.

The US has increased drone attacks in Waziristan since a suicide bomber crossed over Pakistan's border and killed seven CIA employees in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 30.

A video was later released showing Hakimullah Mehsud sitting beside the CIA bomber, a Jordanian double agent, creating the impression that his group played a major role in the second biggest attack on the CIA in its history.

The attack was the seventh suspected US missile assault in the tribal district this month.

North Waziristan houses Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters as well as members of the Haqqani network, a powerful group known for staging attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The US government has called on Islamabad to step up its efforts against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked fighters who cross over into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army recently completed an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, which borders North Waziristan.

Al Jazeera

Six Die in Clashes as Afghans Protest Koran Destruction by Troops

Six people were killed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, where protesters claiming that international troops destroyed copies of the Koran clashed with Afghan and foreign security forces, Afghan officials said.

Also in the south, 13 insurgents were killed by a missile that international forces fired from an unmanned drone, NATO said.

A protest of about 2,000 people in Helmand province's Garmsir district turned violent as demonstrators fought with security forces, leaving six civilians dead, according to the top official in the province, Abdullah Barak. Provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi confirmed six dead but did not say if they were civilians.

NATO said only one person was killed during the protest — an insurgent sniper who allegedly shot at an Afghan official and was killed by NATO troops.

A NATO spokesman denied that the foreign troops desecrated any copies of Islam's holy book in Sunday's operation with Afghan forces in Garmsir. Lt. Nico Melendez said no shots were fired, and no property was damaged.

"We take such allegations very seriously and would support a combined investigation with local Afghan authorities," he said.

Afghanistan is a Muslim nation where blasphemy of Muhammad and the Koran is considered a serious crime that is punishable by death.

Similar allegations that U.S. troops desecrated the Koran during an operation in October in Wardak province also sparked protests. U.S. and Afghan authorities denied the allegation, insisting that the Taliban are spreading the rumor to stir up public anger.

Tensions have intensified in southern Afghanistan as U.S. and other foreign troops step up their efforts to rout the Taliban.

Coalition troops saw a group of insurgents near a safe house preparing ammunition as well as insurgent mortar teams moving equipment in the Naw Zad area of Helmand province, NATO said. The international force launched one missile, killing the 13 militants.

On Monday, another missile fired from an unmanned aircraft killed three insurgents farther south in the Nad Ali district of Helmand, according to NATO.

Drone attacks are widely associated with the fight against al-Qaida and its allies in neighboring Pakistan, where the unmanned aircraft are used to go after militants in areas where U.S. troops are banned from entering. But a NATO spokesman said the aircraft are also regularly used in Afghanistan.

"The use of drones is routine and drone strikes are something that we're able to rely upon when we need them," Lt. Nico Melendez said, adding that their use has not increased or decreased in recent months.

Melendez said drones are used in Afghanistan for reconnaissance, aerial monitoring and for attacks.

In the south-central part of the country, a member of the Afghan National Police was killed and two others were wounded in a suicide attack Monday evening at a police station in Uruzgan province, police chief Juma Gul Hamit said. The suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives near the gate of the police chief's office in Dihrawud district.

Hamit said the attacker tried to enter the office where a meeting was under way. Although wounded by police, the bomber detonated his explosive vest, killing the one policeman and injuring the two others who kept him from going inside.

In Paris, meanwhile, the French military said an army captain died Tuesday of wounds suffered a day before during an insurgent ambush in the Alasay valley east of Kabul. Another French soldier was killed instantly in the same ambush.

Both casualties were with a joint Afghan and French army patrol that was attacked by small arms fire in a village market place.

France has some 3,500 troops with NATO in Afghanistan. It has lost 38 men in Afghanistan since 2001.

FoxNews

CIA deaths revenge for drones, says al-Qaeda

AL-QAEDA said the suicide bombing at a US base in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA agents was "revenge" for the deaths of top militants in US drone strikes in Pakistan.

A Jordanian identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who was said to be a triple agent, blew himself up at the base in Khost on December 30 in the deadliest attack against the CIA since 1983.

The head of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, said the bomber wrote in his will that the attack was revenge for "our righteous martyrs" and named a number of top militants killed in US drone attacks, US monitoring group SITE reported.

These included Baitullah Mehsud, (pictured) the leader of Pakistan's Taliban blamed for a wave of deadly attacks including the killing of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.

Mehsud was killed when a US missile slammed into his father-in-law's house in August last year.

Another militant named was Abu Saleh al-Somali, described as part of al-Qaeda's core leadership and responsible for plotting attacks in Europe and the United States, who was killed in a drone strike in the North Waziristan area in December last year.

The al-Qaeda statement surfaced after another round of US drone strikes left 11 militants dead near Pakistan's Afghan border yesterday.

Attacks by unmanned US spy planes have soared in the past year, with Washington determined to wipe out militant sanctuaries while the extremists have vowed fierce retaliation.

The Australian

Lebanese forces fire at Israeli drone

Lebanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire on Saturday on an Israeli drone that entered Lebanese airspace in the south of the country, the military said in a statement.

"A surveillance drone of the Israeli enemy" overflew "the area of Bint Jbeil at medium altitude" in the morning, the statement said.

"Army anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on the drone, forcing it to gain altitude before leaving Lebanese airspace."

The country's military reports almost daily on airspace violations by Israeli aircraft, but does not normally open fire at them.

The United Nations considers Israeli air incursions into Lebanon to be a violation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

"To the best of my knowledge, there's probably no other country in the world -- probably, I may be wrong -- which is subject to such an intrusive regime of aerial surveillance," UN special envoy for Lebanon Michael Williams said this month.

Resolution 1701 brought an end to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah militants based in southern Lebanon, although the accord has failed to seal a permanent ceasefire.

It mainly insists on the strict embargo on providing arms to Lebanese militias, while also affirming the Beirut government's sovereignty across the whole country.

Breitbart

Suspected U.S. Missile Strike Kills 8 Militants in Pakistan

MIR ALI, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least eight militants Friday in northwestern Pakistan, officials said, the second attack this week in an area believed to hold many insurgents who fled from an army offensive elsewhere in the Afghan border region.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told visiting CIA director Leon Panetta that any new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan must take into account Pakistan's concerns, especially fears that more troops could push militants across the border into Pakistan, according to a statement by Gilani.

The CIA is believed to be behind the more than 40 missile strikes to have hit suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban targets over the last year close to the border region. American officials do not generally acknowledge the attacks, which are unpopular among many here.

A U.S. drone fired two missiles at a compound being used by suspected Taliban militants in a village near Mir Ali in North Waziristan, according to two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.

The compound was destroyed and eight bodies were pulled from the rubble, the officials said, adding that two other suspected militants were wounded.

The targeted compound in the village of Shakhwadi was owned by two brothers, and Taliban militants were frequently seen visiting the building, which was cordoned off after the missile strike, the officials said.

Ahmed Nawaz Dawar, a local tribesman, said Taliban militants buried those killed and took the wounded to a hospital.

Another suspected U.S. missile strike killed three militants and wounded four just after midnight Thursday in Shana Khuwara village in North Waziristan, officials said.

Anti-American sentiment is pervasive throughout Pakistan. The Pakistani government publicly condemns the U.S. strikes as violations of its sovereignty, but many analysts believe the two countries have a secret deal allowing them.

More at FoxNews

US missile hits militants

AT least four militants were killed and five others wounded in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said today.

The attack took place in Shanakhora village of North Waziristan, an area where Washington says Islamist fighters are hiding out and planning attacks on Western troops stationed in neighbouring Afghanistan.

"It was a US drone attack which targeted a militant compound, killing four militants and wounding five others," a senior security official in the area said.

He said two missiles were fired from a US drone.

Another security official confirmed the attack.

The Australian

Clinton, Pakistani students in lively exchange

LAHORE, Pakistan — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Pakistan had little choice but to take a more aggressive approach, starting last summer, to combatting Taliban and other extremist forces that threaten to destabilize the country.

In a lively give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore, Clinton said inaction by the government would have amounted to ceding ground to terrorists.

"If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice," she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.

Clinton met with the students on the second day of a three-day visit to Pakistan, her first as secretary of state.

Shortly after she arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday, a car bomb exploded in a market crowded with women and children in Peshawar, killing 105. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2007.

Clinton's visit is designed to get maximum public exposure to improve America's image in a country where many people dislike and distrust the United States.

As a way of repudiating past U.S. policies toward Pakistan, Clinton told the students "there is a huge difference" between the Obama administration's approach and that of former President George W. Bush. "I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him," she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. "So, to me, it's like daylight and dark."

Clinton likened Pakistan's situation — with Taliban forces taking over substantial swaths of land in the Swat valley and in areas along the Afghan border — to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border.

It would be unthinkable, she said, for the U.S. government to decide, "Let them have Washington (state)" first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centers of population and power on the East Coast.

Clinton was responding to a student who suggested that Washington was forcing Pakistan to use military force on its own territory. It was one of several questions from the students that raised doubts about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

During her hour-long appearance at the college, Clinton stressed that a key purpose of her three-day visit to Pakistan, which began Wednesday, was to reach out to ordinary Pakistanis and urge a better effort to bridge differences and improve mutual understanding.

"We are now at a point where we can chart a different course," she said, referring to past differences over an absence of democracy in Pakistan and Pakistani association with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Although Clinton said she was making a priority of engaging frankly and openly on her visit, she declined to talk about a subject that has stirred some of the strongest feelings of anti-Americanism here — U.S. drone aircraft attacks against extremist targets on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.

The Obama administration routinely refuses to acknowledge publicly that the attacks are taking place.

"There is a war going on," she said, and the U.S. wants to help Pakistan be successful.

The drone attacks have killed a number of Pakistani civilians, while also reportedly succeeding in eliminating some high-level Taliban and other extremist group leaders.

Before flying to Lahore from Islamabad, Clinton visited the Bari Imam shrine, named after Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi, a 17th century Sufi saint who died in 1705 and later came to be known as the patron saint of Islamabad. A suicide bomber struck the shrine in May 2005, killing a number of people.

Source: AP

Pakistan denies drone attack report

Pakistan's military has denied that a US drone attack was behind the deaths of as many as 22 people in the country's tribal areas, insisting that the campaign against the Taliban there is a purely Pakistani offensive.

The confusion over the incident on Saturday came after the military claimed it had captured the hometown of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader in South Waziristan.

Soon after the military's announcement about the town of Kotkai, officials were quoted as saying a missile from a suspected US drone attack had hit a house in Chuhatra village in Bajaur.

"The missile hit home of Maulvi Faqir [a local Taliban commander] and we have reports of 10 dead," Abdul Malik, an official in the region, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Other reports said 14 people had been killed. The Associated Press quoted Mohammad Jamil, a government official, as saying the suspect US drone attack had killed as many as 22 people.

The target appeared to be Faqir Mohammad, a prominent Taliban leader, but he is believed to have escaped, Jamil said.

All of those killed were said to be Taliban fighters.

But the military denied the reports and insisted the blast came from explosives being loaded into a car parked close to Faqir's house.

Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera's correspondent reporting from Islamabad, said: "What the army is saying is [that] there was no drone attack there - what it was, [they say] was explosives parked in a vehicle near the house and they went off, destroying three houses in the village and killing a number of people.

"The army say they have kicked out all foreign influences and this is an operation being conducted solely by the Pakistani military."

In a briefing for the media, Qamar Zaman Kaira, the federal information minister, said Islamabad had no agreement with the US on drone strikes.

The Pakistani authorities have always publicly criticised drone attacks inside Pakistani territory, saying that such attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and help to create sympathy for Taliban fighters and boost their ranks.

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Source: Al Jazeera (English)

US drone takes out al-Qa'ida kingpin

Amanda Hodge

A TOP al-Qa'ida explosives expert has been killed by a suspected missile strike on a house in Pakistan's North Waziristan, striking a major blow to the terrorist organisation and its contribution to the bloody militant insurgency.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri - an al-Qa'ida commander considered a "tier-one" US target - was reportedly killed late on Wednesday during an explosion that destroyed a house in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area.

Masri is understood to have been a member of the military committee of al-Qa'ida, the most important body within the organisation, whose 12 members direct all military strategies. He is the latest in a string of successful strikes on senior al-Qa'ida figures in the hostile and remote FATA region. The attacks are believed to have shattered the organisation's capacity to stage further strikes on the West.

Early reports suggested the house in Spalaga, just 50km from the South Waziristan border, was targeted by a US unmanned missile, although Pakistani security officials later claimed the blast was an accidental detonation of an improvised explosive device during the manufacturing process.

However, analysts cast doubt on the Pakistani claims yesterday, suggesting they were an attempt to cover up US involvement to protect a fragile deal struck with local militant leader Hafiz Gul Bahadir.

Bahadir has reportedly agreed to remain neutral in the military assault against Tehrik-e-Taliban (Pakistan) strongholds in neighbouring South Waziristan in return for an assurance of no army interference in his stronghold.

International intelligence analysts Stratfor said that despite the obvious dangers involved in bomb manufacturing, "it would be odd for a militant as well-seasoned as al-Masri to make such a lethal mistake himself, or associate with an inexperienced bombmaker".

"Due to the strategic importance of Bahadir's neutrality and the precariousness of the understanding, Islamabad would have a clear interest in spinning the explanation of the explosion to make it look like an accident instead of a UAV strike carried out by an ally of Pakistan," Stratfor said in a briefing.

The US is known to conduct unmanned aerial strikes on the area, which harbours Tehrik-e-Taliban leadership, al-Qa'ida militants and Afghan Taliban forces.

A spokesman for the US embassy declined to comment on the explosion.

US and Pakistani officials were understood to be working to confirm the identity of the three suspected militants killed in the explosion, although gathering forensic evidence from the area would be near impossible given the security situation.

Some analysts initially suggested the Masri killed in the strike was the same Abu Ayyab al-Masri, also an Egyptian explosives expert, who assumed leadership of al-Qa'ida in Iraq after the death of the late commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006.

Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna dismissed those claims. But he said the Masri killed in Pakistan this week represented a big win for the US in its campaign to pick off terror targets. "It's a very significant military achievement because 90 per cent of all Taliban and al-Qa'ida attacks use IUDs," Mr Gunaratna told The Australian yesterday.

Meanwhile, militants continued their attacks on the Pakistani capital yesterday, with two gunmen killing a high-ranking military official and his driver in a brazen daylight ambush.

"Two people on a motorbike opened fire. They fired on a military vehicle; they killed a brigadier and a driver of the vehicle," a senior army official said yesterday.

It was the second strike on Islamabad within 48 hours, after suicide bombers killed six people in an attack on Islamabad University on Tuesday.

Source: The Australian

Sources: Taliban leader vows revenge for drone attacks

ISLAMABAD: The new leader of the Pakistani Taliban vowed revenge on Pakistan, the United States and NATO forces for drone attacks along the Afghan border, two local journalists who attended a meeting with him told CNN.

Leader Hakimullah Mehsud met reporters Sunday in South Waziristan, according to the journalists, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the news media.

Taliban commanders Wali-Ur Rehman and Qari Hussein, and spokesman Aazam Tariq, were at the meeting as well, the journalists said.

Mehsud also vowed to avenge the recent death of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, they said. Officials think he was killed by a drone attack in August.

The leader said the Taliban would not disarm as a condition for talks, and added that the militants' withdrawal from the Swat Valley was a strategic move and not a retreat or a defeat, the journalists said.

South Waziristan is one of seven districts in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border.

The Pakistani military is fighting Taliban militants in the country's north, and missile attacks from suspected U.S. drones have targeted militant leaders.

The United States is the only country in the region known to have the ability to launch missiles from drones, which are controlled remotely.

U.S. officials do not comment on suspected drone strikes, which have caused tension between Pakistan and the United States.

Source: CNN

Deaths in Pakistan 'US drone raid'

At least five Taliban fighters have been killed in a suspected US drone attack in a northwest Pakistani town, according to Pakistan officials.

At least five other people were wounded in the double missile raid on a suspected Taliban hideout in Mir Ali, in a tribal region of North Waziristan, Pakistani authorities said.

"The strike targeted a madrassa and an adjoining house in North Waziristan," a Pakistani security official said.

"Most of the casualties are Taliban militants."

Local residents and intelligence officials confirmed five people had died.

The destroyed house and school had been cordoned off to enable a search for more bodies after the attack by the unmanned US aircraft, local officials said.

The semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border has been identified by the US as a refuge for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US invasion of the nation.

Washington does not confirm drone attacks despite the fact the US military is the only organisation operating drones in the area.

Baitullah Meshud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, was killed in a similar attack in neighbouring South Waziristan on August 5.

Violence in the northwest has risen since the appointment of his successor, former aide Hakimullah Meshud.

At least five Pakistani troops were killed in a landmine explosion in South Waziristan on Sunday.

Gunfire was also exchanged between security personnel and opposition fighters, although no casualties have been reported.

Another US drone attack killed eight suspected Taliban fighters on August 27 in South Waziristan.

The Pakistani government has publically said that it does not support the US drone attacks, however, some analysts believe that Islamabad gives tacit agreement to the strikes.

Source: Al Jazeera (English)