Nine more bodies were yesterday pulled from the rubble of houses hit by a suspected US missile strike targeting a Taliban commander in northwestern Pakistan, bringing the total number of dead to 21.
The airstrike in North Waziristan on Friday near the Afghan border was aimed at Siraj Haqqani, a Taliban commander with suspected close ties to al-Qaeda who is blamed for masterminding ambushes on US troops in Afghanistan. It was unclear whether he was among the dead, intelligence officials said.
Local tribal elder Safdar Khan said those killed included six children.
Three intelligence officials confirmed the death toll, although they did not say whether any children were among the casualties.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information.
Haqqani is known to have visited the house that was targeted, the officials said. Khan did not specify whether Haqqani was there at the time.
The attack was the latest by unmanned aircraft in northwestern Pakistan, and suggests a return to the original aim of the covert program to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders who use the lawless region as a base to plot attacks. A drone apparently killed Pakistan’s most-wanted militant, Baitullah Mehsud, on Aug. 5.
Friday’s strike was the third in three weeks in Pakistan, which officially protests the drone assaults as a violation of its sovereignty. The US is believed to have launched more than 40 such attacks in the northwest since last year.
The missile hit a housing compound in the village of Dande Darpa Khel, four intelligence officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. None of the dead were identified, but the officers said local informants told them all those in the compound were Afghans.
Dande Darpa Khel is the Pakistani stronghold of Haqqani, who operates on both sides of the border and has a powerful network in eastern Afghanistan. He has a large Islamic school in the village that was hit by a suspected US missile in October last year, killing about 20 people.
Siraj is the son of senior Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was supported by US and Pakistani aid when he fought in the 1980s against Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan. Now, US commanders count him as a dangerous foe.
Father and son are alleged to have close connections to al-Qaeda and to have helped funnel foreign Islamist fighters into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops.
The Haqqanis have been linked to an attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a suicide attack on a hotel in Kabul, both last year. Haqqani network operatives also target US forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost Province with ambushes and roadside bombs.
Pakistan’s border region is remote, mountainous and has little government or military control. Al-Qaeda’s top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in the area and militants move freely across the border.
The US occasionally fired missiles into the region beginning in 2006, but dramatically stepped up the attacks last year. The missiles are fired from CIA-operated drones believed to be launched from across the border in Afghanistan, or from secret bases inside Pakistan. US officials rarely acknowledge the airstrikes.
Separately, Pakistani paramilitary troops fighting insurgents along Afghan border said they killed six militants in an operation in northwest Pakistan.
The paramilitary Frontier Corps said in a statement the operation was conducted in the Mohmand tribal region, where Pakistani forces caught a top Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Umar, on Tuesday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS