US missiles struck a training facility operated by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and a militant hide-out yesterday, killing 17 people and wounding 27, intelligence officials said.
The two attacks by drone aircraft took place in South Waziristan, a Mehsud stronghold close to the Afghan border where Pakistani troops are gearing up for a military offensive, two officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
They took place as US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano met government officials in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. She discussed topics of “mutual interest” with them, a US Embassy spokesman said.
The drone attacks were the latest in more than 40 believed to have been be carried out by the US against militant targets in the border area since last August. Washington does not directly acknowledge being responsible for the attacks, which kill civilians as well as militants.
Most Pakistanis criticize the drone attacks, and Islamabad officially protests them as violations of its sovereignty. Still, most experts believe the government secretly approves of them and likely provides the US with intelligence.
One of the attacks yesterday targeted an abandoned seminary in the village of Mantoi that was allegedly being used by militants from Mehsud’s group for training, said the officials. The other struck a hide-out in the nearby village of Kokat Khel, they said.
In total, 17 people were killed and 27 were wounded, they said.
On Thursday, US Marines in neighboring Afghanistan launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Helmand province. Pakistan said it moved troops to the stretch of its border opposite Helmand to stop militants fleeing the US assault.
The US wants Pakistan to crack down on militants on its side of the border, believing it essential to stabilizing Afghanistan eight years after the invasion that ousted the Taliban there.
The Pakistani military launched an offensive in the Swat region close to the border in early May and is currently gearing up for operations in South Waziristan to eliminate Mehsud, who has been blamed for a string of deadly suicide attacks across the country that have killed more than 100 people in the past month.
In neighboring North Waziristan yesterday, Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected militant hide-outs, killing at least four insurgents and wounding seven others, two more intelligence officials said. Those airstrikes hit targets where Taliban fighters killed 16 government troops in an ambush earlier this week, the officials said, also speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The US appears to be ramping up the pressure on Mehsud, who is viewed in Islamabad with growing alarm. Last week, the Taliban leader narrowly escaped a strike on a funeral for militants killed in an earlier drone attack. Eighty people died in the strike, although Mehsud escaped unharmed.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS