ISLAMABAD: Suspected US spy drones fired missiles yesterday into an alleged militant compound in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing at least seven people, security officials said.
The air strike in South Waziristan was the latest in a string of attacks on Pakistani soil that have raised tensions between Islamabad and Washington.
The strike targeted a compound about 20 km northeast of Wana, the main town in the tribal zone, they said. “Reports say at least seven people were killed in the missile strike, which destroyed the facility,” a security official said.
Officials said tribesmen assailed Taleban militants who beheaded a local militiaman in public and tried to abduct their chief, as clashes across northwest Pakistan left 41 people dead yesterday. The government has hailed the emergence of anti-Taleban tribal militias as evidence that it can root out militants waging an insurgency in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The militias, known as lashkars, have been compared to the so-called awakening councils that have helped US forces turn the tables against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. “Our tribal brothers, those who are patriots, have broken with them (the militants), and lashkars are fighting against those involved in terrorism,” Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Pakistani and Afghan political and ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders meet in Islamabad today to try to agree on ways to tackle rising militant violence including the possibility of opening talks with the Taleban. There are doubts that the ramshackle militias can face down heavily armed insurgents who have seized swaths of Pakistan’s border belt, forged ties with Al-Qaeda, and targeted pro-government elders with suicide bombings and kidnappings.
Officials have denied reports they are arming the militias, though observers suspect that they at least receive government funding. The botched abduction occurred in Swat, a picturesque valley once popular with tourists where government forces have been battling militants for more than a year.
Police said a group of assailants were trying to hustle militia chief Pir Samiullah from his home in the Mandaldag area to a getaway car when dozens of local tribesmen confronted them and snatched him back. Dilawar Bangash, the Swat police chief, said hundreds of Taleban later returned, seized three members of the militia and beheaded one of them on a road before a large crowd.
A Taleban commander called Mullah Shamsher told onlookers “that this was a lesson for anyone who tried to oppose them,” Bangash said, citing accounts gathered later by police. Meanwhile, the militia was gathering men from the surrounding area who engaged the Taleban in an hours-long gunbattle.Bangash said 20 militants, six militiamen and four bystanders were killed in the shooting and another police official said several tribesmen were reported missing.
—With input from agencies
