ISLAMABAD, 28 April 2007 — Missiles destroyed a house and damaged two madrasas in Pakistan near the Afghan border yesterday, killing four people and wounding three others, witnesses and intelligence officials said.
Other officials giving different accounts of the incident said the four militants were killed by their own explosives.
“They had stored explosives in the compound and four people died because of an explosion caused by the ammunition they had dumped there,” chief military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad told AFP.
It was unclear who carried out the pre-dawn attack at Saidgi village in the remote North Waziristan region, which is considered a stronghold for both the Taleban and Al-Qaeda. It lies about three kilometers from the border.
Another senior military official in the capital, Islamabad, said the dead and wounded had been making bombs and had accidentally caused an explosion.
However, two local intelligence officials said a missile attack caused the blast, and a government official said the missiles were apparently fired from Afghan territory.
A prominent tribal leader and journalist, Haji Pazir Gul, told Arab News from Miranshah on telephone “Frontier Corps and other security personnel had cordoned off the area after the explosion.”
The US-led military coalition in Afghanistan and the separate NATO force both denied any knowledge of the incident. Habib Ullah, the owner of the house, said five missiles hit the building and two nearby religious schools. He said four of his guests were killed in the house. The attack caused the roof to collapse. “I don’t know whether these missiles were fired from some plane or not, but those killed in the attack were not terrorists,” he told an Associated Press reporter near the scene.
Habib said he had been staying at another house in the village when the attack happened. He declined to discuss his occupation or answer other questions. “I am already upset, so don’t bother me,” he said.
Residents said there was no one inside the madrasas when they were hit.
Saidgi is in a region from where pro-Taleban militants often launch attacks on government and US troops stationed in Afghanistan. Pakistan says US troops are not allowed to operate on its soil, but the US has occasionally launched missile strikes aimed at terror suspects on the Pakistan side of the border.
A January 2006 strike by a US Predator drone in Bajaur, another tribal area north of Waziristan, was allegedly targeting Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri.
Pakistan intelligence officials said then that Al-Zawahri was not at the site, but four other senior Al-Qaeda militants were killed, although that information was never verified. Thirteen villagers also were killed.
Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in its campaign against terror, says it has deployed 80,000 troops in its semi-autonomous tribal regions, including North Waziristan, in a bid to counter the militants.
However, US and Afghan officials have said Pakistan needs to do more to halt the insurgency destabilizing the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
