PAKISTAN – A US drone aircraft killed 12 Afghan militants in a missile strike in Pakistan near the house of an Afghan Taliban commander allied to al-Qaeda, intelligence officials and residents said yesterday.
Four missiles hit a house shortly before midnight on Thursday in North Waziristan, about 15km (10 miles) from the Afghan border. Pakistani security officials initially said three people had been killed but an intelligence agency official said yesterday 12 Afghan militants were killed. “All those killed were Afghans; men who had come from Logar,” a villager said, referring to an Afghan province south of the capital, Kabul.
Frustrated by an intensifying Afghan insurgency getting support from bases in lawless northwestern Pakistani border enclaves, the US stepped up its attacks with pilotless drones last year.
There have been about 57 strikes since the start of 2008 which have killed about 500, many of them militants, according to reports from Pakistani security agents and residents.
The former owner of the house struck in the Thursday night attack was a relative of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran Afghan militant commander who is also a senior Taliban leader, and who lives nearby, a Pakistani security official said. The owner of the house was killed in Afghanistan last year, he added.
Haqqani, who was in the past known to be close to Osama bin Laden, is said to be sick and his group is now led by his son, Sirajuddin. The so-called Haqqani Network is one of the main Taliban factions battling US-led forces in Afghanistan. – (Reuters)