3 NATO trucks set ablaze

 The Daily Times, Pakistan, Thursday, September 09, 2010

Staff Report QUETTA:

Unknown assailants set three NATO trailers on fire in Khuzdar on Wednesday. According to sources, two trailers, carrying logistic support for NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan, were heading towards Kandahar from Karachi when unknown armed men intercepted them and made the drivers and cleaners hostage at gunpoint.

The assailants sprinkled fuel on trailers and set them ablaze. The attackers managed to flee from the scene. Separately, some unidentified men set another NATO trailer ablaze in Wadh area of Khuzdar. Meanwhile, unknown armed men torched the ambulance of Civil Hospital, Khuzdar and fled from the scene. Separate cases had been registered and investigations were underway. Militants had been frequently carrying out attacks on NATO trucks for the past 12 days.

Bomb blast kills 10 in Pakistan's Kurram region 

AFP, September 10, 2010

A roadside bomb killed 10 people and wounded four in Pakistan's Kurram tribal region on the Afghan border on Thursday, a government official told Reuters.

The explosion happened in Palaseen village, about 65 km (40 miles) northeast of the region's main town, Parachinar.

"It was a remote-controlled bomb, which was detonated as soon as a passenger van got there," said Hamid Khan, deputy administrator of the region. Those killed were all civilians.

The Pakistani Taliban have threatened to carry out more suicide attacks on government targets in response to U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's regions in the northwest.

In the last 24 hours, four drone attacks have killed 19 Pakistanis.

There was no independent confirmation and militants often dispute government accounts.

(Reporting by Javed Hussain; Writing by Kamran Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Alex Richardson).

US drone strike kills six militants in Pakistan

AFP, September 10, 2010

A US drone attack Thursday killed six Pakistanis in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt, security officials said -- the fourth strike in 24 hours.

The latest strike hit North Waziristan, the same tribal district targeted in three other drone attacks since Wednesday.

The target of the fourth drone attack was a compound in the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

A total of 24 (Pakistanis referred to by AFP as militants) were killed in the four strikes.

"Two US drones fired three missiles. We have reports that six militants were killed," a security official based in Peshawar told AFP.

Residents in Miranshah said they heard three huge explosions and later the villagers started announcements from local mosques asking for help.

"Militants have dug out six dead bodies. Five people were critically wounded," a local resident told AFP, requesting anonymity.

"They are still digging the rubble, two nearby houses were also damaged," he added.

Intelligence officials said they were trying to find out the nationalities of the militants killed, but they had no reports about the presence of any high-value target.

"An informer told us there were some Afghan Taliban among the dead but we are investigating," one intelligence official in Miranshah told AFP.

Two intelligence officials in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the death toll.

US forces have been waging a drone war against Taliban commanders in the northwestern tribal belt, where militants have carved out havens in mountains outside direct government control.

Officials in Washington say the drone strikes are a vital tool needed to protect foreign troops in Afghanistan and have killed a number of high-value targets including Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

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

More than 1,040 people have been killed in over 100 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, including a number of senior militants. However, the attacks fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.

Al-Qaeda announced in June that its number three leader and Osama bin Laden's one-time treasurer Mustafa Abu al-Yazid had been killed in what security officials said appeared to be a drone strike in North Waziristan.

Under US pressure to crack down on Taliban havens along the Afghan border, Pakistan has in the past year significantly increased operations against Taliban in the area.

More than 3,700 people have been killed in the past three years in a series of suicide attacks and bomb explosions across Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other groups.