PESHAWAR: US missile strikes killed 70 people in a Pakistani tribal area but narrowly missed Taleban chief Baitullah Mehsud, officials said yesterday.
Drone aircraft, which are only deployed by US forces in the region, hit Taleban positions on Tuesday then struck again later as hundreds of people gathered for a funeral in Mehsud’s northwest tribal stronghold of South Waziristan.
Intelligence officials said Mehsud had joined the funeral procession targeted in the missile strike but had a narrow escape because he left just before the attack.
Several senior Taleban militants were killed in the strike, the officials added. But a top Taleban aide denied Mehsud was anywhere near the missile strike. With the mountainous area on the Afghan border out of reach of government forces, security officials and Taleban militants have been giving widely differing death tolls, with some saying 20 to 30 people were killed in the latest drone attack.
A senior government official in the northwest city of Peshawar also said some important Taleban commanders were among the dead.
“Reports we received from the area said that 50 to 60 people, mostly militants, were killed in the drone attack,” the official said.
Intelligence officials said late on Tuesday 45 people had been killed in the attack as mourners were leaving the funeral. Yesterday, they said 70 people had been killed. “Bodies are still lying there and the Taleban are not allowing anybody close while their men are coming and going in vehicles,” resident Ghulam Rasool told Reuters by telephone yesterday.
Taleban spokesman Wali-ur-Rehman said later 65 people had been killed. Most of them, he said, were civilians. “One of our commanders, Bilal, was also martyred. We buried them all in three different graves as some of the bodies were badly mutilated,” he said.
