RSS Feed
May 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda 
U.S. missiles launched from a terror drone killed four people in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said.
A drone targeted a compound near Miranshah, the main town of the tribal district of Pakistan.
“The drone fired two missiles on a house in the Tabai area near Miranshah,” one of the security officials told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, adding that four suspected militants were killed.
“It is not immediately known if an important target is among those killed,” he said.
The area is a stronghold of the Haqqani network — Afghan insurgents blamed for a series of spectacular attacks on Western targets in Kabul — and Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.
Islamabad denies any support for Haqqani activities.
U.S. officials say its leaders are based in Waziristan, the stronghold in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt.
Washington considers the area the main hub of Taliban plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
A local administration official and another intelligence official confirmed Wednesday’s drone strike and casualties.
Residents said the bodies had been charred badly and militants had cordoned off the area and were sifting through the rubble.
It was the third U.S. drone strike reported in Pakistan since parliament in March demanded an end to the attacks on Pakistani territory, as part of new guidelines for Islamabad’s often stormy relationship with Washington.
Relations plummeted into deep crisis after U.S. air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26, prompting Islamabad to shut its Afghan border to NATO supplies and evict U.S. personnel from an airbase reportedly used as a hub for drones.
Pakistan says the missile attacks are counter productive, violate its sovereignty, kill civilians and fuel anti-U.S. sentiment.
The frequency of the drone strikes has diminished since November, but U.S. officials are believed to consider them too useful to stop altogether.
Pakistan signaled last week that it was prepared to end the NATO blockade, but hopes of clinching a deal appeared to break down over the cost of transit rights.
U.S. President Barack Obama snubbed Pakistan at this week’s NATO summit in Chicago, only seeing President Asif Ali Zardari in passing and voicing frustration with Pakistan.
Islamabad has been incensed by Washington’s refusal to apologize for the November air strikes and U.S. officials have so far rejected Pakistani proposals to charge several thousand dollars for each alliance truck crossing the border.
The blockade has forced NATO to rely on longer, more expensive routes through Russia and Central Asia, even as it plans a large-scale withdrawal of combat troops and hardware from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
According to an AFP tally, 45 U.S. missile strikes were reported in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2009, the year Obama took office, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011.
The New America Foundation think-tank in Washington says drone strikes have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in Pakistan in the past eight years.
Source: Agencies
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
