Suspected US drone strike kills 8 in Pakistan

by Hasbanullah Khan –

Fri Nov 20, 2009,11:31 am ET

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) –

A suspected US missile attack killed eight people in Pakistan's mountains on the Afghan border as CIA chief Leon Panetta held talks in Islamabad on Friday.

The attack, the presumed work of CIA drones, was the second in two days in North Waziristan.

Two missiles slammed into a compound used by Pakistani Taliban fighters in Palooseen village in the district of Mir Ali, Pakistani officials said.

"At least eight people were killed in the drone attack. A compound used by militants was targeted," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Another security official described the target as a Taliban training centre. There were foreigners among the dead, the official said.

US strikes, which fan anti-Americanism in the nuclear-armed Muslim country, have surged since President Barack Obama took office and made the US-led war on Pakistani Taliban and Afghanistan a top priority.

The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, which US officials say have killed a number of top-level militants but which Islamabad publicly opposes as a violation of its sovereignty.

Criticism of the strikes has lessened somewhat in public since a US drone attack killed Pakistan's much feared Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud on August 5 and analysts say Islamabad gives its tacit support to the strikes.

Panetta held talks with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Washington's policy review in Afghanistan, said the premier's office in a brief statement.

Panetta and Gilani agreed on "operational functioning between the two militaries and intelligence agencies" to eliminate the terror threat, it said.

It was his second visit since taking office this year and comes a week after US National Security Advisor James Jones held similar talks in Pakistan.

Obama has said he is weeks away from unveiling a long-awaited war strategy review in neighbouring Afghanistan, where commanders have warned the conflict will be lost without an extra 40,000 US troops.

He is also reportedly increasing pressure on Islamabad to fight not just militants who attack within Pakistan, but those using Pakistan as a base from which to fight the Kabul government and Western troops in Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani officials have expressed concern that any major US troop increase in Afghanistan could push Taliban fighters into Pakistan.

Yet Islamabad has warned against any precipitous US troop drawdown in case Afghan fighters pour across the border, exacerbating the rising security problems Pakistan has faced since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The United States has been increasingly disturbed by deteriorating security in Pakistan where attacks and bombings have killed more than 2,550 people in 29 months since troops laid siege to a radical mosque in the capital Islamabad.

In South Waziristan, Pakistan has been pressing its most ambitious offensive to date against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) since October 17, sending troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships into battle.

Four security officials, including an army captain, were killed as heavy fighting erupted in Push Ziarat near Makin on Friday, military officials said.

"Militants are putting up stiff resistance and troops are using jets, artillery and heavy weaponry," a security official said, describing Push Ziarat as on the militants' escape route into North Waziristan.

Elsewhere in the tribal belt, another four soldiers were killed when militants stormed a security post in Bajaur, where rebels have stepped up attacks to distract the army's attention from South Waziristan.

A bomb packed with steel pellets tore through a Pakistani police vehicle on the outskirts of Peshawar early Friday, killing three policemen in the second attack in the the northwestern city in less than 24 hours.