United Citizen Action activists shout slogans against drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas during a protest in Multan yesterday.
PESHAWAR: At least nine suspected militants, including two foreigners, were killed in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region in a US drone strike and a Pakistan military operation, security officials said yesterday.
In the third such attack since Nawaz Sharif came to power, two suspected militants riding a motorcycle were struck by missiles in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan late on Saturday night.
“The two, probably Arabs, were passing through Mosaki village when the drone fired two missiles and hit them,” said an official, adding that their identities were not clear. Another security source said both were of Turkmen origin.
Pakistan Air Force jets pounded militant hideouts overnight, killing seven insurgents, senior security officials said. “These areas are known as strongholds of the militants from where they stage deadly attacks in Kohat and Peshawar,” one official said.
The army believes mountains linking the Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram tribal areas are one of the main strongholds for the Taliban-linked militants in Pakistan.
Another official confirmed that air strikes had taken place somewhere between Orakzai and Khyber. “We could hear the sounds of fighter jets and see flames when bombs were dropped in the mountains.”
Many Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies fled Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the US invasion in 2001. They retreated deeper into the mountains following a Pakistan army offensive in 2009, launching attacks from places where ground forces cannot reach them.
Drone attacks began in Pakistan in 2004. Pakistani Taliban fighters, who operate as a separate entity but are allied with their Afghan counterparts, often seal off the sites of drone strikes immediately. Pakistan’s government has denounced the attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.
US President Barack Obama has promised to scale them back, resorting to them only when a threat was “continuing and imminent”. Retuers
