US Predators strike in Pakistan for 4th time in 24 hours

[Toki]

US Predators struck yet again in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.

Six Taliban fighters, including some possibly from Afghanistan, were killed and five more were critically wounded in an attack on a compound in Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

"Two US drones fired three missiles" at the compound, a Pakistani intelligence official told AFP. "We have reports that six militants were killed."

The Taliban reportedly cordoned off the area and are attempting to recover the dead and wounded from the rubble. No senior Taliban, Haqqani Network, or al Qaeda commanders have been reported killed at this time.

Miramshah is in the sphere of influence of the Haqqani Network, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban group led by mujahedeen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj. The Haqqani family runs the Manba Ulom madrassa in Danda Darpa Khel, a village just outside of Miramshah that serves as a hub of activity for the terror group.

The strike is the fourth recorded in the past 24 hours. In the four strikes combined, 24 terrorists were reported killed. Earlier today, US Predators or the more powerful Reapers struck twice in Danda Darpa Khel and once in Datta Khel, a known hub for al Qaeda's leadership.

North Waziristan is a known haven for the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and a host of Pakistani and Central and South Asian terror groups, but the Pakistani military has refused to carry out an operation to root them out. The Pakistani military maintains a garrison in Miramshah, but it is confined to base while the US is forced to carry out airstrikes against the terror groups.

The number of strikes is unprecedented, as the US has yet to carry out four strikes in a 24-hour period since the campaign began in 2004 and was ramped up in July 2008.

With today's strikes, the US has carried out 62 attacks inside Pakistan this year. The US exceeded last year's strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram late last month. In 2008, the US carried out 36 strikes inside Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010.]

All but six of this year's 62 strikes have taken place in North Waziristan. Of the six strikes that have occurred outside of North Waziristan, four took place in South Waziristan, one occurred in Khyber, and one took place in Kurram.

Since July 2008, unmanned US Predator and Reaper strike aircraft have been pounding Taliban and al Qaeda hideouts in the tribal areas in an effort to kill senior terror leaders and disrupt the networks that threaten Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the West. [For more information, see LWJ report, Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010.]


Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/09/us_predators_strike_3.php#ixzz0z3ImkgeW

The CIA is racking up some kills.

[bobdina]

24 Pakistani Militants Killed By Drones in 4 Strikes
By HASBANULLAH KHAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 9 Sep 2010 10:39
Print Email
Bookmark and Share

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan - A U.S. drone attack Sept. 9 killed six militants in Pakistan - the fourth strike in 24 hours - officials said, amid an upsurge in violence across the country.

The latest strike hit North Waziristan, the same district targeted in three other drone attacks since Sept. 8 and a renowned hub for Taliban militants who have vowed to attack security forces in retaliation.
Related Topics

* Middle East & Africa

Hours later in the southwestern city of Quetta, a car bomb near the house of the provincial finance minister killed three people and wounded six others, the city's police chief told AFP. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The target of the drone attack was a compound in the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. A total of 24 militants were killed in the four strikes.

"Two U.S. drones fired three missiles. We have reports that six militants were killed," a security official based in Peshawar told AFP.

Residents in Miranshah said they heard three huge explosions and later the villagers made announcements from local mosques asking for help.

"Militants have dug out six dead bodies. Five people were critically wounded," a local resident told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Intelligence officials said they were trying to find out the nationalities of the militants killed, but they had no reports about the presence of any high-value target.

"An informer told us there were some Afghan Taliban among the dead but we are investigating," an intelligence official in Miranshah told AFP.

Two other intelligence officials in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the death toll.

The northwest is also a hotbed of sectarian violence, and in Kurram tribal district, bordering North Waziristan to the north, nine people were killed and seven wounded Sept. 9 in a landmine blast believed to target Sunni Muslims.

The nine died after their vehicle struck a landmine in remote Dol Ragha village, close to the Afghan border, which has been a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

"It was an incident of sectarian violence," local administration official Mumtaz Khan official told AFP by telephone.

Sectarian violence between the minority Shiite and majority Sunni communities has claimed more than 4,000 lives in Pakistan since the late 1980s.

Religious violence has sharply increased in Pakistan over the past week as Muslims mark the last few days of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

A suicide bomber killed 59 people at a Shiite rally in Quetta, capital of southwest Baluchistan province, on Sept. 3, three days after suicide bombers killed 31 people and wounded hundreds during a Shiite mourning procession in Lahore. The Lahore attack was subsequently claimed by the Taliban.

In other attacks, at least 20 people were killed and more than 50 wounded Sept. 7 in a car bomb attack targeting a police headquarters in the northwestern city of Kohat.

Washington has branded the rugged area on the Afghan border - part of which has been hit by Pakistan's catastrophic flooding - a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.

U.S. forces have been waging a drone war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in the northwestern tribal belt, where militants have carved out havens in mountains outside direct government control.

Officials in Washington say the drone strikes are a vital tool needed to protect foreign troops in Afghanistan and have killed a number of high-value targets including Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

The U.S. military does not as a rule confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

More than 1,040 people have been killed in over 100 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, including a number of senior militants. However, the attacks fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.

[ianstone]

This is such a sweet event, impressive and stunning, Just so, so cool.