ISLAMABAD: Militants shot and wounded two journalists on the outskirts of Peshawar yesterday, and US missiles killed 12 people in a strike on a Pakistani Taleban commander’s stronghold in tribal lands bordering Afghanistan.
It was 20th drone fired in village Garyom in Waziristan. Sources from Miranshah, headquarters of South Waziristan, told Arab News over the phone, “It is reported that three missiles fired by US drones targeted a house of a tribal man Mir Gul.”
Other officials said two missiles apparently demolished a house in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. “Nine foreigners were among ten killed,” a top security official told reporters. Pakistan officials normally use the term “foreigners” to describe Al-Qaeda militants.
Meanwhile in Peshawar, gunmen opened fire on two journalists near Hayatabad area yesterday. Police sources said the journalists were on their way to Khyber Agency to interview a leader of an outlawed outfit.
Journalist Sami Yousafzai recounted how he and a journalist from Japan’s Asahi newspaper were attacked by three gunmen on foot at the boundary between the Peshawar neighborhood of Hayatabad and the Khyber tribal region.
“They stopped our car and put a gun to my head. I pushed it away and they opened fire,” said Yousafzai as he lay in a hospital bed with two wounds to his hands and one in the shoulder.
Asahi’s Islamabad bureau chief Motoki Yotsukura was hit in the leg. “I’m OK,” Yotsukura told Kyodo news agency while being transferred from Peshawar to a hospital in the capital Islamabad.
The shooting of a Japanese and an Afghan journalist yesterday was the latest incident involving foreigners in Peshawar. The abduction bid came a day after gunmen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat, Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, after killing his Pakistani guard in Hayatabad. Attarzadeh, a commercial attache to the Iranian consulate, is still missing.
Separately, four insurgents were killed and eight were wounded in a swoop in the Charsadda district adjoining Peshawar. Military operations by the security forces against militants continued in Machnai and adjoining areas in Mohmand Agency.
According to sources, security forces overnight pounded militants’ hide-outs in Machnai and other areas. Three people were injured when mortar shells hit their houses in Rashkai and Ayeshakor area.
Matthra area of Peshawar remained under unannounced curfew and security forces established pickets in different parts of the. Spiraling violence has raised fears that nuclear-armed Pakistan could slide into chaos unless the 8-month-old civilian government, also faced with a potentially crippling economic crisis, and the army can throttle the militant threat.
