\nWed Apr 1, 2009
\nBy Alamgir Bitani\n<\/p>\n
\nA pilotless U.S. drone fired a missile at a Taliban compound in Pakistan’s Orakzai region on Wednesday, killing 12 people in the first such attack in the area, a security official and residents said.<\/p>\n
The raid came a day after Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud said his group had carried out an assault on a police training centre in the eastern city of Lahore in retaliation for U.S. drone attacks.<\/p>\n
The missile hit a compound of a Taliban commander loyal to Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud, and 12 people were killed and 13 wounded.<\/p>\n
Hakimullah Mehsud later spoke to Reuters and said six of his fighters were among the dead. He vowed revenge.<\/p>\n
\n“This wasn’t a minor thing. The pain of this attack will be felt in Islamabad,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.<\/p>\n
He did not elaborate but said his men would not give up their fight: “Let the Americans use all their drones, we’ll fight them on the battlefield.”<\/p>\n
Another Taliban official who declined to be identified said an Arab militant known as Kaka was also killed in the attack.<\/p>\n
The United States, frustrated by an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan getting support from the Pakistani side of the border, began launching more drone attacks last year.<\/p>\n
Since then, more than 30 U.S. strikes have killed about 300 people, including mid-level al Qaeda members, according to reports from Pakistani officials, residents and militants.<\/p>\n
Pakistan objects to the strikes. Officials say about one in six of the strikes over the past year caused civilian deaths without killing any militants, and that fuels anti-U.S. sentiment, complicating the military’s struggle to subdue violence.<\/p>\n
The concentration of strikes in Waziristan was also pushing some militants eastwards, deeper into Pakistan, officials say.<\/p>\n
PROTEST<\/strong><\/p>\n Orakzai has been one of Pakistan’s most peaceful Pashtun regions but Taliban are known to have infiltrated the area, as they have done elsewhere in the northwest.<\/p>\n U.S. officials say success in Afghanistan is impossible without tackling militant enclaves in northwest Pakistan, where Taliban battling Western forces rest, regroup and train, and al Qaeda plots violence.<\/p>\n U.S. President Barack Obama announced a review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan last week, vowing to tackle militants in the ungoverned Pakistani border areas.<\/p>\n The New York Times said last month the United States was considering expanding its covert war to Baluchistan, a sprawling province of deserts and jagged mountains on the border of violence-plagued southern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n About 150 clerics and elders from Taliban leader Mehsud’s tribe held a protest in the town of Tank, in North West Frontier Province, to condemn the drone strikes.<\/p>\n One cleric, Hassam-ud-din, told the crowd the government approved the U.S. strikes but should stop them immediately.<\/p>\n The government denies reports it has quietly given permission for the strikes and that the drones are launched from a secret air strip in Pakistan.<\/p>\n Early last year, the United States stopped forewarning Pakistan about the strikes because of suspicion some Pakistani agents were tipping off militants they regarded as assets.\n<\/p>\n U.S. expands Pakistani drone-strike zone Wed Apr 1, 2009 By Alamgir Bitani A pilotless U.S. drone fired a missile at a Taliban compound in Pakistan’s Orakzai region on Wednesday, killing 12 people in the first such attack in the area, a security official and residents said. The raid came a day after Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud said his group had carried out an assault on a police training centre in the eastern city of Lahore in retaliation for U.S. drone attacks. The missile hit…<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,25,14,41,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-military","category-science","category-technology","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
\nMeanwhile they started recruiting the new batch of “jarheads” ready to fight with a joystick, a confi chair, a video-wall and training by online gaming. The future is bright, the future is drone wars in the hands of trigger-joystick-happy innocent 18 year olds…
\nsource:: reuters<\/a>
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