Two US pilotless aircraft fired four missiles into a house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border yesterday killing 25 militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The strike came two days after a visit to Islamabad by Admiral Mike Mullen, the top US military official, in which he expressed concern over links between Pakistani security agents and militants attacking US-led forces across the border in Afghanistan.
The drone strike happened in Mir Ali, about 35km east of the region’s main town of Miranshah.
A Pakistani intelligence official in the region, who declined to be identified, said the house was being used as a militant hideout.
“They have surrounded the area and are not allowing anybody to go there,” the intelligence official said, referring to militants.
Twenty-five bodies had been recovered from the rubble and three women were among those killed, he said.
Another official said some foreign militants were among the dead, but their numbers and nationalities could not be confirmed.
The US has been using drone attacks to target militants over the past few years in Pakistan’s lawless ethnic Pashtun border areas.
The attacks are a source of concern for the Pakistani government, which says civilian casualties stoke public anger and bolster support for militancy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing