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PESHAWAR: Four people were killed in a suspected US drone attack on militant
hideouts in the Daza Ghundi area near South Waziristan.
‘The drone was flying very low and as soon as militants in a truck opened fire
at it, a missile was fired that hit the vehicle and killed three militants,’
Reuters quoted a resident as saying.
‘Drones initially flew over mountains around Gangi Khel, where the Taliban have
some positions. There was some ground fire towards one of the drones and they
left the area,’ AFP quoted a security official as saying.
Gangi Khel is a village around five kilometres (three miles) west of Wana, the
main town in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan district.
‘Drones returned after some time and targeted a vehicle, which was parked near
some shops. Three people were killed in the attack. Four others were wounded —
they were either shopkeepers or local residents,’ the official said.
Two security officials described the three dead as militants, revising an
initial death toll of two.
It was not immediately clear whether any high-value targets were killed.
Another security official had earlier said it was not known whether the target
was a vehicle or a house.
Wednesday’s strike comes the day after Pakistan told visiting US envoys that
drone attacks fuelled extremism in the nuclear-armed nation and flagged up ‘red
lines’ in Pakistan’s cooperation with Washington’s war against extremists.
More than 35 missile strikes have killed over 350 people since August 2008,
fanning hostility against the United States and the government in Pakistan,
where more than 1,700 people have died in extremist bombings in two years.
The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces
and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only
forces that deploy drones in the region. |
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