US drone strike kills six in Pakistan
US drones yesterday resumed missile attacks in Pakistan for the first time in a month, killing six fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network on the Afghan border, officials said.
Unmanned aircraft fired four missiles into a vehicle travelling through the South Waziristan district, targeting a common root for Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants who infiltrate Afghanistan to attack US troops.
"It was a US drone attack. Four missiles were fired. The target was a vehicle. Several militants were killed. The death toll is six," a Pakistani military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Another Pakistani security official confirmed the same details of the attack near the small town of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, around six kilometres from the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistani intelligence officials said the dead belonged to the Haqqani group, an Al-Qaeda ally.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani yesterday criticised US drone strikes in his country's tribal belt, saying they undermined anti-terror efforts.
Gilani said his government had convinced other countries of the world through diplomatic channels that "these drone attacks are creating problems for us."
"Under a well-thought-out strategy we had separated the tribes from militants, but when drone attacks occur, militants and tribes unite again, which is difficult for us to sustain politically and it also create difficulties for the military operations," Gilani said.
The attack came just one day after a Washington meeting between Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, and Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, which runs the drone war.
It was the first missile strike since March 17, when Pakistan's civilian and military leaders strongly protested over a US drone attack that killed 39 people, including civilians and police, in North Waziristan.
This week, the New York Times reported that Pakistan told the United States to rein in drone strikes and slash the number of CIA agents and special forces operating in the conservative, nuclear-armed Muslim country.
The paper said the order highlighted the near collapse of US-Pakistani cooperation since a CIA contractor shot and killed two men who allegedly tried to rob him in broad daylight on the streets of Lahore in January.
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