Assailants armed with rockets and assault rifles attacked a newly built checkpoint near the Afghan border in Pakistan before dawn yesterday, killing all eight security forces, officials said.
The attack happened in a village near Miran Shah, the main town in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region where the government has deployed thousands of troops and security forces in an effort to flush out remnants of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their local supporters.
All eight soldiers guarding the checkpoint were killed, said a senior security official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Another security official in the region, who also didn't want to be named, said over the phone that the slain troops had moved to the new checkpoint hours before the attack.
The official said that Pakistani armed forces backed by helicopters were now trying to track down the assailants.
House attack
Hours after the checkpoint attack, helicopter gunships fired on a home along the Pakistan-Afghan border, 50km west of Miran Shah, killing eight people and injuring several others, residents said.
Four women and four children were among the injured and were taken to a hospital in Miran Shah, said a resident who didn't want to be named.
The army could not immediately confirm the incident, and it wasn't immediately clear if the helicopter assault and checkpoint attack were linked.
Residents claim a US helicopter was involved. However, the Pakistani military also uses US-made helicopters provided by Washington.
The checkpoint was set up this week as part of Pakistan's efforts to stop insurgents from sneaking into the country or going back to Afghanistan, where US forces have been trying to flush out insurgents.
Key ally
Pakistan is a key ally of the US in its war on terror, and it has killed or captured scores of terror suspects and their local supporters in the North and South Waziristan regions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
The rebels often target security forces in retaliation.
The latest attack on security forces came in the same region where al-Qaeda operative Hamza Rabia was killed in December last year.
Pakistani officials said Rabia was killed in an explosion caused by bomb-making activities.
However, local residents said Rabia died in a missile attack, and parts of what appeared to be a missile were found at the site.
Neither Pakistani nor US officials have confirmed that version of the incident.
Rabia gained prominence after the arrest of al-Qaeda's suspected No. 3 Abu Farraj al-Libbi in Pakistan in May.
Al-Libbi -- who twice tried to assassinate Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf for aiding Washington's war on terror -- was later turned over to the US for further investigation.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS