The unmanned aircraft crashed Saturday night near Jangara village in the South Waziristan tribal area, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The village is located near the border with North Waziristan.
The officials said they learned of the crash by intercepting Taleban radio communications but don’t know what caused it. Both North and South Waziristan are home to many Taleban fighters, though it is unclear whether they shot down the aircraft or if it crashed because of technical problems. Drone crashes have happened before in Pakistan, but they are rare.
The debris was first seized by the Taleban. Several hours after the crash, the Pakistani army sent soldiers in to wrest it out of militant hands, sparking a fight with the Taleban in which three militants were killed, said the officials. Three militants and two soldiers were also wounded in the clash, they said.
Nawab Khan, a government official in South Waziristan, confirmed the drone crash and the subsequent clash between militants and army troops. But he did not know whether the army had successfully seized the debris.
Neither the Pakistani army nor the US Embassy responded to requests for comment.
The US normally does not acknowledge the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan, but US officials have said privately that the attacks have killed many high-level militants — most recently, Al-Qaeda’s second in command, Atiyah Abd Al-Rahman, and its chief of operations in Pakistan, Abu Hafs Al-Shahri.
President Barack Obama has dramatically increased the number of drone attacks against militants in Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region since taking office in 2009 — partly in response to Pakistan’s failure to target militants who stage attacks against US troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials regularly denounce the drone attacks as violations of the country’s sovereignty, but the government is widely believed to have supported the strikes in the past and even allowed the aircraft to take off from bases within Pakistan.
That support has come under strain in recent months, especially in the wake of the US commando raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town on May 2. The Pakistanis were outraged that the US didn’t tell them about the operation beforehand.
Elsewhere in Pakistan’s tribal region, militants attacked a security checkpoint killing a policeman and two members of an anti-Taleban militia, said Farooq Khan, a local government administrator.
The attack took place late Saturday night in the Aka Khel area of the Khyber tribal region, said Khan. The checkpoint is located on a key route that NATO uses to transport supplies to forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Security forces and local tribesmen fought back against the militants, killing 10 of them, said Khan.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Pakistani Taleban have staged frequent attacks against security forces and tribesmen who have opposed them.
