U.S. Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistani Tribal Area

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/world/asia/us-drone-strike-kills-6-in-pakistani-tribal-area.html

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An American drone strike against a compound in the North Waziristan tribal district on Wednesday killed at least six people, Pakistani officials and local residents said. It was the latest in a series of strikes by C.I.A.-operated drone aircraft to coincide with a major offensive by the Pakistani military in the area, which is notorious as a sanctuary for militants.

Four missiles slammed into the compound near Datta Khel, about 20 miles west of Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, according to a security official in Peshawar who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Pakistani ground troops are pushing toward Datta Khel as part of a drive to expel the Taliban and allied foreign militants from North Waziristan. The operation, which started on June 15, has displaced at least 800,000 civilians and resulted in at least 550 deaths.

The Pakistani military says it has complete control of Miram Shah and North Waziristan’s other principal town, Mir Ali. But there has been relatively little direct ground fighting; rather, many of the deaths have been attributed to air and artillery strikes on residential compounds where militants were believed to be sheltering. Most militant fighters who were in North Waziristan’s towns and cities in June are believed to have fled to neighboring tribal districts, or to more remote parts of North Waziristan like Datta Khel, which remains under Taliban control.

The military said that airstrikes killed 30 suspected militants at six locations on Tuesday, including Datta Khel, the area where the drone struck on Wednesday. The military also said there was ground combat in the area.

“Our forces are now in Datta Khel, where we are facing some resistance,” a senior security official in Peshawar said. “Two of our men got killed in an encounter in Datta Khel bazaar a couple of days ago. Four Uzbeks were killed in that shootout.”

Still, the official said, the operation was making progress. “More than 80 percent of North Waziristan now stands cleared” of militants, he said.

Pakistani officials give slightly different accounts of the casualties inflicted by the latest American drone strike, the seventh this year. The official in Peshawar said six people died, including four Uzbeks and two members of the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. But a government official posted to North Waziristan, but currently living in an adjacent district, said he had received reports of seven deaths, all members of the Haqqani network. The discrepancy highlighted the difficulty of obtaining reliable information from the tribal districts.

The military operation began one week after a Taliban assault on the main airport in Karachi, the country’s most populous city. It followed the collapse of government efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban.

Human rights groups and local residents challenge the military’s claims that all 550 people reported killed in the operation so far were militants; they say some civilians have been killed in airstrikes as well. The military has declared North Waziristan off limits to journalists, and it is frequently impossible to independently confirm events and casualty reports there.

The Taliban issued a thinly veiled threat against local journalists on Tuesday. In a statement addressed to two advocacy groups, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Taliban accused the news media of “playing the role of war propagandists” and warned of possible attacks.

“If we get engaged in attacking them, then no crying and sobbing will be heard,” said the message, signed by the Taliban from the Mohmand tribal district. The leader of that faction, Omar Khalid Khorasani, is seen as a rising force in the movement, which has suffered two major splits in recent months.

Concerns about reprisals for the North Waziristan offensive prompted the military last week to take over responsibility for security in Islamabad, the capital. The offensive has also worsened political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which accuse each other of clandestinely backing certain Taliban factions.

The Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, also faces new challenges at home from two political rivals, who said they would try to topple his government with street protests over the next few weeks.