MIRANSHAH - Taliban militants armed with guns and rockets ambushed a military convoy Friday, killing seven soldiers in North Waziristan, officials said. Meanwhile, a US drone killed 13 militants in South Waziristan.
The ambush took place at Khar Qamar, 30 kilometres west of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan.
The security officials said nine militants were also killed in the attack, but there was no independent confirmation of the toll.
“At least seven soldiers were martyred when militants fired machine guns and rockets on a military convoy,” a senior security official told AFP. Other security officials in Peshawar confirmed the attack and that the toll had risen from four to seven. “After the ambush, military helicopters and troops retaliated and there were reports of deaths of nine militants,” an intelligence official said. Pakistan has for years battled insurgents in the tribal belt on the Afghan border. It says more than 3,000 soldiers have died but has resisted US pressure to carry out a sweeping offensive in North Waziristan.
Meanwhile, a US drone killed at least 13 militants Friday when it fired two missiles on a vehicle and a house in South Waziristan tribal badlands near the Afghan border, security officials said. The attack took place in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, part of the tribal belt that Washington considers a global hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
“A drone fired two missiles on a vehicle. At least 13 militants were killed,” a senior security official said. “It is not immediately clear if some important target was hit in the missile strike.”
Another security official based in Peshawar and an intelligence official based in South Waziristan confirmed the attack and death toll. The area is a stronghold of militants belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella militant group led by warlord Hakimullah Mehsud.
Local tribesmen said that after the missile strike militants immediately cordoned off the area and began pulling out their colleagues from the burning wreckage. “The bodies of militants were badly burnt in the fire and I saw some of them putting small body parts in plastic bags,” a resident said.
“Militants cordoned off the area and fired gunshots in air to keep the locals away,” he added.
The missile attacks fuel widespread anti-American resentment in Pakistan, which has been running especially high since US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
President Barack Obama in January confirmed for the first time that US drones target Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil, but American officials do not discuss details of the covert programme.
According to an AFP tally, 45 US 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.
US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed that Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders privately supported US drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the US alliance is hugely unpopular.
But Pakistan is now reviewing its entire alliance with the United States in the wake of the November deaths and has kept its Afghan border closed to Nato supply convoys since then.
It ordered US personnel to leave the Shamsi Airbase, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone programme, and is thought likely to impose taxes on convoys if it reopens the Afghan border.