ISLAMABAD: Two suspected US drone missile strikes killed 15 people Wednesday in an area of Pakistan’s volatile northwest teeming with militants suspected in a recent suicide attack that killed seven CIA employees in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.
Counting the latest strikes, US drones have attacked North Waziristan four times since the CIA bombing a week ago, killing at least 20 people.
In the first attack Wednesday, a suspected drone fired two missiles at a house in the Datta Khel region of North Waziristan, killing seven people, said intelligence officials.
A second strike occurred as locals were retrieving bodies from the rubble of the house, killing five people, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The identities of those killed in the attacks were unknown.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal area, said he believes the drone strikes over the past week in North Waziristan are retaliation for the suicide attack against the CIA.
The Americans “have concluded that the Haqqani network is causing major problems in eastern Afghanistan, and they seem determined to hit the network, so we should expect more frequent attacks in North Waziristan,” said Shah. But Shah said the effectiveness of the drone strikes has been hampered by a shortage of human intelligence in the region.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that at least 30 of their operatives have been killed over the past year in North Waziristan.
“Pakistan’s intelligence ability is almost zero in the border region because of the high rate of killing spies,” said Shah. “In such situations, these attacks are proving counterproductive and producing more militants.” US officials rarely discuss the missile strikes, and although Pakistan’s government publicly condemns them as violations of its sovereignty, many analysts believe the two countries have a secret deal allowing them.
