US missile ‘kills up to seven in Pakistan’s Khyber’

PESHAWAR: A US missile strike killed seven militants in Pakistan’s tribal district of Khyber on Thursday, local security officials said, in an apparent expansion of America’s covert drone campaign.

The United States does not as a rule confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the aircraft in the region.

Washington considers Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and says eliminating the militant threat is vital to winning the nine-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials said a US drone fired a missile that destroyed a vehicle carrying up to seven militants in the Spin Darang area of the Tirah valley in Khyber, which borders Afghanistan.

“It was a drone attack. Seven militants travelling in the vehicle were killed in the attack,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP.

Another security official said all the dead were local Taliban militants.

They were thought to be from Waziristan, Pakistan’s most notorious Al-Qaeda and Taliban hub on the Afghan border, and the northwestern district of Swat, where Pakistan launched a major operation last year to clear out the Taliban.

Pakistani security officials were divided over whether it was the first or second US drone strike in Khyber, close to the teeming northwestern city of Peshawar.

Local media reported a US drone strike in Khyber in May, although Pakistani officials at the time were reluctant to confirm the attack.

A new US policy review on Thursday concluded that President Barack Obama’s troop surge has made progress in curbing the Taliban in Afghanistan and severely weakening Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The report says that after a relentless US campaign, Al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan is weaker than at any stage since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

Progress will permit a “responsible reduction” of US forces in Afghanistan, currently nearly 100,000-strong, to begin next July, though a full handover to Afghan security is not envisaged until at least 2014, the review said.

The report also said that the US anti-terror alliance with Pakistan had been “substantial” but “uneven” in the last year, since Obama vowed to forge a new relationship of mutual trust and respect with Islamabad.

On Thursday, Britain said it was looking into media reports that two British men, possibly Muslim converts, were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region last week.

“Our High Commission in Pakistan is seeking further information on these reports,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Channel Four News and The Guardian newspaper claimed that the Britons died in a strike near the town of Datta Khel on December 10.

The men were aged 48 and 25 and reportedly had English names but used the pseudonyms Abu Bakr and Mansoor Ahmed.

If confirmed, the men would be the first white British converts to have been killed in the area, The Guardian said. AGENCIES

10 Pakistani pilgrims die in Saudi bus crash

JEDDAH: Ten Pakistani pilgrims died and 25 others were injured Saturday when the bus they were traveling in overturned near Khulais, 150 km north of Makkah.

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10 Pakistani pilgrims die in Saudi bus crash

7 militants killed in Mohmand and Swat

GHALANAI: The security forces in their anti-militancy drive killed seven militants in Mohmand tribal region and Swat, sources said.

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7 militants killed in Mohmand and Swat

Seven Militants Arrested From Mohmand Agency

Security forces have arrested at least seven militants including an extremist commander Chota Usman during an operation from Mohmand Agency.

According to sources, security forces arrested Taliban commander Chota Usman during a search operation from Doezai, district of tehsil Pandyali of Mohmand Agency.
Chota Usman is recognized as one of the important commander of Taliban. He was a local commander of area Tozai.

Six other militants were also arrested with Chota Usman.

NATO Killed 38 Taliban In Clash

AFGHANISTAN, KANDAHAR: Afghan army special forces backed by US-led international troops killed up to 38 Taliban militants in separate operations, they said on Saturday.

In a surprise attack on Friday night units from the two forces working together dropped from helicopters into Charchino district, in central Uruzgan province, for a battle that lasted several hours, the Afghan army said.

“Twenty-nine enemies were killed. The bodies are still lying in the battle field,” southern Afghanistan military corp commander general Shair Mohammad Zazai told AFP.

He said the troops confiscated 96 sacks of aluminium nitrate explosive and a large amount of opium.

Separately, Taliban militants ambushed an Afghan army patrol on Friday in Barmal, a district of Paktika, the defence ministry said in a statement.

“A large number of enemies were killed but they left behind two of their dead. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded,” the statement said.

In neighbouring Khost province, seven militants were killed in a joint operation by Afghan army and NATO forces and 17 militants were wounded, the ministry said.

Afghanistan has experienced a series of fresh attacks across the country in the days before the presidential vote on August 20, only the country’s second.

A suicide blast in Kabul early Saturday killed seven civilians and wounded more than 90 others.