U.S. Reported To Kill 12 In Pakistan

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
September 13, 2008
Pg. 9
By Pir Zubair Shah and Salman Masood
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The intensified American campaign against militants suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas continued Friday. Two missiles fired from remotely piloted American aircraft killed 12 people in an attack on a compound in North Waziristan, according to a local journalist and television reports.
The missiles were reportedly fired just before dawn at Tole Khel, a village near Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan. The attack struck the home of a local tribesman, Yousaf Khan Wazir, who was among the dead, a local journalist said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The compound was believed to be a training camp for militants, a Pakistani intelligence official said, and most of the dead were “Punjabi Taliban,” a term for militants from Punjab Province. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Another Pakistani security official said that those killed belonged to Al Badar, a group that had long operated against the Indian government in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Some members had come to Waziristan to fight in Afghanistan, he said.
The dead included women and children, according to residents who spoke to Pakistani reporters. There was no immediate word on the reported attack from American or Pakistani military authorities.
Pakistani helicopter gunships hovered over the area after the missile attack, and a Pakistani convoy was hit by a roadside bomb that wounded three soldiers, state television reported.
On Monday a strike by a Predator remotely piloted aircraft hit the North Waziristan compound of one of Pakistan’s most prominent Taliban leaders, killing more than 20 people, intelligence officials said.
The flurry of American strikes in the tribal areas has caused grave concern in Pakistan. Its military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, reiterated Friday that Pakistan would safeguard its territorial integrity. After meeting with corps commanders at army headquarters in Rawalpindi, General Kayani also said that the army and Pakistan’s new democratic government were united in their views.
The New York Times reported this week that in July, according to senior American officials, President Bush secretly authorized American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government. That disclosure prompted an immediate rebuke from General Kayani.
The focus of his anger was a Sept. 3 raid by American forces on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border. Pakistani officials said that attack had achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas. According to the Americans, Pakistan has permitted the tribal areas to become safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
American officials said later that more than two dozen commandos in the Navy Seals had spent several hours on the ground, supported by an AC-130 gunship, and had killed two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters before being whisked away by helicopter.
Pakistani commentators say that such incursions will simply further inflame anti-American sentiment. Former President Pervez Musharraf was scorned for his unflinching support of the United States in the effort to combat terrorism.
In an editorial titled “Enough, Uncle Sam,” The News, a leading daily newspaper, warned Friday of “unseen consequences” if the United States continued the strikes inside Pakistan. It said the attacks would become “the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had — and the extremists will be quietly delighted at the civilian deaths as they know that more feet will turn to the path that leads to their door.”
President Asif Ali Zardari, in office less than a week, is already under scrutiny because of concerns that he may be too obliging to the Americans.
“Zardari should be getting all concerned on board and calibrating a Pakistani response to this American pressure,” Ayaz Amir, a political analyst and member of Parliament, wrote in a separate column in The News. “He needs to be seen as his own man and a guardian of Pakistani interests.” The early impression, however, “is of being an American apologist,” Mr. Amir wrote.
In other fighting on Friday, 32 militants and 2 soldiers died in combat between Pakistan security forces and militants elsewhere in the wild lands bordering Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported, citing an Army spokesman, Maj. Murad Khan.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
 
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