MIRANSHAH: A US drone strike targeting a militant compound killed at least two suspected insurgents in a restive Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border yesterday, officials said.
The strike took place in the Anghar area, 10km south of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal region, a stronghold for Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants.
“A US drone fired two missiles on a militant compound, killing two suspected militants and wounding two others on early Thursday,” a senior security official said. The identities of those killed were not immediately known but they appeared to be of Central Asian origin, the official said.
Another security official in Miranshah said two Taliban fighters were wounded and identified as “Punjabi Taliban” from Pakistan’s central Punjab province. “One of them, Aslam alias Yaseen, is linked with attacks on Pakistan army headquarters in Rawalpindi and another attack on (the) naval base in Karachi.”
In Kabul, US-led Nato apologised for an air strike that President Hamid Karzai said killed a two-year-old boy, Rafiullah, as acrimony deepened over a deal to allow US troops to stay in the country after 2014. Karzai warned that the latest incident threatened the proposed bilateral security agreement with Washington.
An official from Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Commander General Joseph Dunford “quickly called President Karzai and expressed deep regrets for the incident”.
“We did not target or strike a house. The information that we have shows that the air strike hit the road,” the official said. “Unfortunately, the civilian victims were in the vicinity of the strike.” Dunford told Karzai he was committed to a joint investigation into the attack, which ISAF said targeted a Taliban commander involved in operations against Afghan security forces in the southern province of Helmand.
Karzai “strongly condemns the air strike by Nato forces on a house which killed one child and wounded two women,” a statement from his office said. “This attack shows American forces are not respecting Afghan lives... As long as unilateral acts and atrocities continue by American forces on our people, we won’t sign this the agreement.” The strike was launched from an unmanned drone and hit the village of Faqiran on Thursday morning, the statement said. ISAF said the strike targeted an insurgent riding a motorbike but did not confirm that a drone was involved.
Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi further stoked tensions by saying President Barack Obama had broken a recent promise “to respect the sanctity and dignity” of Afghan civilians in the same manner as US citizens. “That is how the US respects the sanctity and dignity of homes in the US, bombing a residence for an individual?” Faizi said. Agencies
