Wednesday, May 12, 2010

MIRAMSHAH/PESHAWAR: The US spy planes on Tuesday launched the biggest missile attack in North Waziristan tribal region and killed 28 suspected militants and villagers in the wake of heightening tension in the Pak-US relations over Faisal Shahzad’s alleged involvement in the botched New York car bombing.

Official sources in Miramshah, the principal town of North Waziristan, said the unmanned US spy planes fired the biggest number of missiles at a time against a single target.

"It’s terrible. They intend to intensify the drone attacks as the number of planes hovering over the area has gone up dramatically," remarked an official in Miramshah, who declined to be named.

The official and tribal sources said 13 people, including villagers and militants, were killed in the first round of missile strikes in the Doga area in Dattakhel subdivision while 15 others, believed to be militants, were killed in the second hit on a house in the Gorweek area.

According to sources, nine drones took part in the coordinated missile strikes in the mountainous Doga area in Dattakhel subdivision, located near the border with the Urgoon area of Afghanistan’s Paktika province.

The area, which is about 65-70 kilometres west of Miramshah, is the hometown of MNA from North Waziristan Kamran Khan. Pakistan has deployed one Army brigade in this area. According to sources, the drones first started firing missiles at a speedy car travelling towards Doga from the border area of Afghanistan. Three people, suspected to be the militants, were killed and two others injured in the strike .

Later, the drones started targeting suspected hideouts of the militants affiliated with North Waziristan Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur and his deputy Maulvi Sadiq Noor. Security officials said some of the missiles hit tented hideouts of the militants which they had temporarily established in mountains.

Besides local militants, officials said, foreign fighters were also killed in the series of missile strikes. Tribesmen said they saw nine bodies of the local militants being shifted to their native villages near Miramshah for burial. The sources close to the Taliban said there was no prominent figure among the victims.

An official of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) on condition of anonymity said death toll might rise as some of the missiles struck houses of local tribesmen in the village. He said five tribesmen injured in the attack in Doga were brought to the Agency Headquarters Hospital in Miramshah and three others were rushed to Peshawar.

Later, the drones fired three more missiles and struck the hideout of Maulvi Sadiq Noor in the Gorweek area of Dattakhel tehsil. The official sources said 15 militants were killed and four others injured, while militants claimed only 10 of their men had been killed in the attack.

The government officials said it was the 31st missile attack by the US spy planes in North Waziristan since the beginning of this year and 13th on Dattakhel, stronghold of Hafiz Gul Bahadur-led militants.

They said over 500 people, including militants and local tribesmen, had lost their lives in these missile strikes and several others were maimed for life. Meanwhile, tension prevailed in the militancy-stricken North Waziristan with tribesmen fearing a likely military operation after a strong-worded threat to Pakistan by the US following the arrest of Faisal Shahzad.

The peace committee, headed by prominent cleric Maulana Gul Ramazan, has been trying to bring together the government and the Hafiz Gul Bahadur-led Taliban. But the committee members have not been able to overcome the differences between the government and the Taliban after the May 11 attack on a military convoy near Khattay Killay in which nine soldiers were killed and 16 others were injured.

Since then the military authorities have been facing problems in taking troops form one area to another for security reasons. The militants had threatened to attack the troops if they came out of their camps in Miramshah, Mir Ali and Dattakhel. The militants said that they had imposed their own curfew of their own and would not allow the troops to move in the area during the curfew hours.