A suspected US missile strike destroyed an al-Qaeda and Taliban hideout in a Pakistani tribal area yesterday, killing 13 alleged militants including several Arabs, security officials said.
Residents of Azam Warsak village in South Waziristan said that a house was blown up by a missile fired from a pilotless drone and the loud blast was heard kilometers away in the rugged valley.
US drones have launched several strikes on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border targeting members of Osama bin Laden's network, although Islamabad has never confirmed such attacks due to issues of national sovereignty.
The attack comes a month after bin Laden's No. 3 man, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed in a missile strike on Jan. 29 in North Waziristan.
"A house used as a den by al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban militants was hit by a missile. Thirteen people were killed and around 10 were wounded," a senior Pakistani security official said.
"There was no immediate information about the presence of any high-value target," the official said.
A security source based in Peshawar said the missile was fired by a US drone at about 2am.
Another security official said most of the dead were Arabs.
Armed militants cordoned off the site after the missile strike, residents said.
They said that four unidentified "guests" had arrived late on Wednesday at the destroyed house, although their identities were not known.
South Waziristan is also the base of Baitullah Mehsud, an al-Qaeda-linked warlord accused by Pakistan of masterminding the slaying of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but officials said the strike was not in the area he commands.
A spokesman for the US-led coalition force based in Afghanistan said it had "no reports" that either it or the separate NATO-headed force were involved in the strike.
Pakistani forces were not immediately available to comment on the incident.
Amid pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan, the New York Times reported last week that US officials recently reached a "quiet understanding" with him to intensify such strikes.
The new arrangements included attacks by armed Predator drones operating from a secret base inside Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri vowed to avenge the missile strike that killed al-Libi in a videotape message broadcast on an Islamist Web site on Wednesday.
"No chief of ours has died a natural death. Nor has our blood been spilled without a response," he said in the 10-minute recording posted on the al-Ekhlaas Web site.
Also see: Partnerless in Pakistan: Bush administration losing the plot
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RSS