ISLAMABAD, 21 June 2007 — The US-based Human Rights Watch called on Pakistani authorities yesterday to allow an independent investigation into a suspected missile strike that killed at least 32 alleged Al-Qaeda militants.
Opposition MPs from religious parties walked out of Parliament after the attack on a madrasa in the North Waziristan tribal area, blaming it on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan and saying the dead were students.
A senior intelligence official and residents said three missiles fired from Afghanistan hit the building. But the army said the blast was caused by explosives at the site, which it said was being used as a training camp.
“The Pakistani government should immediately allow independent investigators and journalists access.... to ascertain exactly who and how many have died, at whose hands and under what circumstances,” Human Rights Watch South Asia researcher Ali Dayan Hasan said in a statement. “Once again, there are allegations of a US strike and of children dying in that strike. Once again, Pakistan is denying US involvement or Pakistani responsibility for the attack,” Hasan said.
He asked the government to allow international investigators to visit the site of the incident.
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad told AFP that 30 militants were killed, up to half of whom were foreign nationals including Arab and Turkmen insurgents.
He said neither Pakistani nor US forces had anything to do with the attack.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan also denied any involvement.
A prayer leader in Datta Khel district, which is several kilometers from the remote and heavily forested blast site, said 34 “local people” were killed when three missiles streaked across the border on Tuesday morning.
“Most of the bodies were torn to pieces,” said Khan Wali Khan, who runs another local madrasa, adding that they had been buried locally.
During the opposition walkout, Liaquat Baloch, the parliamentary leader of Pakistan’s main alliance of religious parties, said the “American” attack killed mainly students. “We are walking out to protest the killings,” he said.
Intelligence officials said the dead were militants from Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement, who fled into Pakistan after US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime from power in Afghanistan in late 2001.
The issue of possible US missile strikes is sensitive because Pakistan refuses to allow foreign troops to conduct military operations on its soil.
Some 80 people died in a raid on another tribal madrasa in October.
Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri was said to have escaped a US missile attack in the area in January 2006. Four other militants and more than a dozen civilians were killed.
In December 2005, Egyptian Al-Qaeda explosives specialist Hamza Rabia was killed in a blast in North Waziristan.
