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U.S. Drone Strike Reported In Pakistan, Ending Five Month Pause

U.S. Drone Strike Reported In Pakistan, Ending Five Month Pause

By Zulfiqar Ali and Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A U.S. drone aircraft struck suspected militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas Wednesday, breaking a five-month pause in the attacks, Pakistani security officials said.

Officials said the unmanned aircraft fired two missiles, hitting a car and a house in the North Waziristan tribal area Wednesday evening.

It marked the first strike by the CIA-run U.S. drone program in Pakistan since Christmas, according to the independent New America Foundation, which tracks the incidents. The strikes, which peaked at well over 100 in 2010, have dramatically decreased due to Pakistani opposition and tighter Obama administration guidelines on their use.

The strike came less than two weeks after U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held captive by the Taliban in North Waziristan, was freed in a prisoner exchange. His release has raised the prospect that the U.S. might increase the pace of drone attacks against the Taliban and the Haqqani network, the allied militant group that held Bergdahl.

Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, former commander of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier this week that U.S. officials used to fear that an operation against the Taliban or Haqqani network could result in Bergdahl’s death.

“We no longer have that concern they have this pawn they can play against us,” Mattis said.

Residents reached by telephone Wednesday night said that drone aircraft continued to hover over North Waziristan throughout the day. The missile strikes were heard some 15 miles away from the blast site in the village of Tabbi, said Muhammad Khalil, a resident of the town of Miramshah.

Four Uzbek nationals were reported killed, but that could not be independently verified.

Also Wednesday, an Uzbek militant group based in Pakistan’s tribal areas said it participated in a deadly raid on the airport in the Pakistani city of Karachi that left 36 people dead, including 10 assailants. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant activity, said the claim was published on the website of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, one of many Islamist organizations operating in lawless northeast Pakistan, The Associated Press reported.

Pakistani officials had earlier said that some of the militants who participated in the Sunday night attack, which shocked the country and forced the closure of its largest air hub, were of Uzbek and Chechen origin.

AFP Photo/Asif Hassan

Reported Executions Threaten Pakistan’s Talks With Taliban

Reported Executions Threaten Pakistan’s Talks With Taliban

By Zulfiqar Ali and Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Pakistani government’s improbable bid to negotiate a truce with Islamist insurgents verged on collapse Monday after reports that militants had executed 23 paramilitary soldiers held captive since 2010.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the “heinous, criminal act” and government negotiators canceled scheduled talks with Islamist representatives.

A militant group operating in the Mohmand tribal area, in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, issued a statement late Sunday claiming responsibility for the killings of the Frontier Corps paramilitary soldiers, believed to have been captured in an attack on a checkpoint in 2010. The militant group, which operates under the umbrella of the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, said the soldiers were executed in retaliation for the deaths of the group’s supporters in military custody.

The militants, under the command of a leader named Umar Khalid Khurasani, who had staunchly opposed the peace initiative, said they would release a video confirming the killings of the soldiers. Security officials in Islamabad, the capital, said they were treating the claim as genuine, although they would not confirm the number of soldiers that might have been killed.

Sharif, who launched the peace bid earlier this month amid deeply mixed feelings among Pakistanis, stopped short of saying the talks had collapsed. In a statement, he commended the “sacrifices rendered by the martyrs” and said only that the reported killings in Mohmand, along with a spate of other recent attacks blamed on militant factions, were having a negative effect on the talks.

Government and Taliban negotiators were due to meet Monday in Akora Khattak, 35 miles east of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. But Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, a member of the Taliban negotiating committee, told a news conference that a deadlock had been reached between the two sides.

Khan said the meeting was canceled by Irfan Siddiquie, coordinator of the government negotiating committee, and he called it a worrisome development. He appealed to all sides to refrain from violence.

The central spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban told reporters by phone from an unknown location that the government had killed 23 militants during the last three days in the southern port city of Karachi and in Nowshera district, about 20 miles east of Peshawar.

A Pakistani security official who was not authorized to be quoted by name dismissed that as a “baseless allegation” and “propaganda tactics to justify their dastardly acts of terror.”

AFP Photo/A Majeed