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Pakistani minister says U.S. drone attack sabotages Taliban talks

Xinhua | November 1, 2013

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Friday condemned the latest U.S. drone attack and termed it as an attempt to sabotage the proposed peace talks with the Taliban.

The U.S. unmanned aircraft fired missiles on a house and vehicles of the Pakistani Taliban leaders in North Waziristan tribal region and killed six of them.

Local media said the American drone launched the strike at a time when the Taliban leaders were holding a meeting in their stronghold Dandey Darpakhel area.

Two Taliban figures, Tariq Mehsood, personal guard of the Taliban Chief Hakimullah Mehsood, and another commander identified as Abdullah were among those killed, local media reported.

Geo television reported that the vehicle targeted in the strike was being used by the chief of Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsood. But it was not clear if Hakimullah Mehsood was in the vehicle at the time of the strike.

Dunya TV quoted security sources that Hakimullah Mehsood was killed in the strike.

Taliban and the government have not officially confirmed the reports.

The interior minister angrily reacted to the U.S. attack as it was carried out at a time when the government was set to begin talks with Taliban militants.

He said in a statement that the government has planned to send a three member delegation for initial discussion with the Taliban on Saturday. “We think that the latest drone attack was an attempt to sabotage the dialogue,” Chaudhry Nisar said.

Local media quoted security sources as saying that the American spy aircraft struck the Taliban compound when the Taliban were holding a meeting of their central council. Hakimullah Mehsood was scheduled to preside over the council’s meeting.

Some sources said the meeting was called to discuss strategy for talks with the government.

Reports suggested that the Taliban were holding the meeting when the U.S. drone rained missiles into the area.

Another report said that local Taliban chief, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, Friday asked the residents to leave North Waziristan for a week in view of the deteriorating situation in the region.

A pamphlet distributed in the region asked the people to take their precious items with them.

November 2, 2013 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

CIA targeted rescuers of drone victims in Pakistan: Report

Press TV – August 1, 2013

The CIA unmanned aircraft deliberately targeted rescuers attempting to help victims of previous drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found.

A field investigation by the Bureau focuses on drone strikes in a single village in North Waziristan last year when the CIA was after Yahya al-Libi, an alleged senior al-Qeada member who was finally killed in one of the aerial attacks on June 4, 2012.

The CIA had at the time shown a video to Congressional aides in which only Libi is killed in a drone strike.

It was first in February 2012 that an investigation by the Bureau found that the CIA had conducted 11 drone attacks on rescuers of previous strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas between 2009 and 2011.

The tactic, called “double-tap” strikes, apparently stopped in July 2011 but new reports show that the CIA had resumed the strikes a year later.

Five double-tap strikes took place in mid-2012, killing 53 people and injuring 57 others. One of the attacks targeted a mosque, a report by Pakistani journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai, commissioned by the Bureau, found.

The US has always escaped from admitting that civilians have been killed in drone strikes. However, in investigation by legal charity Reprieve indicated that eight civilians died in a double-tap strike on July 6 2012 with the possibility of further civilian deaths in a July 23 attack.

“On both occasions [in July] our independent investigation showed a high number of civilians who were rescuers were killed in the strikes,” Shahzad Akbar, Islamabad-based lawyer, says, confirming the findings of Reprieve’s investigation.

UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Christof Heyns noted in June 2012 that double-tap strikes can be labeled as war crimes.

“If civilian ‘rescuers’ are indeed being intentionally targeted, there is no doubt about the law: those strikes are a war crime,” he said.

Another UN official, Ben Emmerson QC, UN special rapporteur on torture, also agreed with his colleague. “Christof Heyns… has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.”

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August 2, 2013 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

At least 1 in 5 drone strike victims a confirmed civilian – leaked Pakistani records

RT | July 22, 2013

Leaked internal data produced by Pakistani officials documenting drone strikes on the ground reveal a high civilian death toll, countering US claims that the targeted assassination campaign results in “exceedingly rare” fatalities.

A 12-page report, titled ‘Details of Attacks by NATO Forces/Predators in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas)’ describes 75 CIA drone attacks between 2006 and 2009, with death tolls compiled by officials in the turbulent border regions for internal use by the government. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – a UK news website – says it obtained three identical copies of the classified document from various sources in Pakistan.

The numbers show a death toll of 746 people, 147 of whom were confirmed as civilians. Of those civilian deaths, 94 are children. Statistically, it means at least one in five victims of US precision strikes was a civilian, and more than 12 per cent were minors.

“There was no benefit in officials ‘cooking the books’ here, since this document was clearly never intended to be seen outside the civilian administration,” said Rauf Khan Khattak, who recently served as Pakistan’s interim finance minister.

The US President and the CIA do not have to disclose details of what is officially considered a classified program to Senate or to the public, so official American estimates have never been released. CIA Director John Brennan, considered to be the architect of the drone program, has said that “we only authorize a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest of circumstances,” and that collateral deaths themselves are “exceedingly rare.” And an internal incomplete official report leaked earlier this year – covering a later period – showed that the CIA thought that only one out of every 482 people it killed was a civilian.

But the Pakistani numbers tally much closer with those provided by outside sources. The bipartisan New American Foundation estimates that at least 12 per cent of drone strike victims are definitely civilians, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism itself claims the number could be as high as 25 per cent.

Rauf Khan Khattak, a long-time opponent of foreign drone strikes, believes the newest figures could be the most reliable obtained so far.

“What you end up with in these reports is reasonably accurate, because it comes from on-the-ground sources cultivated over many years. And the political agent is only interested in properly understanding what actually happened,” he told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

But others have urged for these documents to be taken into consideration only when measured against other sources. For example, following Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, only three civilian death incidents are recorded through the year up until late October, when the data ends – even though media reports from the same time indicate that civilians and children had died in attacks included in the FATA document.

“Tribal documents might present a broad picture. But any accuracy is dependent on what data the military chooses to release to or withhold from the political agents. In the last eight years, for example, no precise casualty figures have ever been submitted to Pakistan’s parliament,” said former FATA official and minister Rustan Shah Mohmand.

Independent sources estimate that around 2,500 and perhaps more than 3,500 people have been killed in UAV strikes on Pakistan since 2004. Obama has ramped up the program significantly since coming into office.

The difficulty in establishing the precise number of civilians among those is also compounded by the identity of the supposed militants and the CIA’s own targeting protocols , known as ‘signature strikes’.

Militants may simply be a villager engaged in an insurgency, and will have little to separate himself from a civilian, and vice versa. There is also little incentive for relatives to inform the authorities that any UAV strike victim is a militant, and much of the data is compiled on hearsay and local knowledge.

In turn, the US has tacitly admitted that it picks the majority of its targets based on a pattern of behavior – suspicious movements, contact with established targets, attendance of training centers, and other indirect indicators. Drones sometimes target follow-up events that occur as a result of its previous strikes, such as funerals of past drone targets. The earlier leaked documents showed that out of the 482 people killed, only six were known al-Qaeda commanders.

But even when taking all these variables into consideration and interpreting them in the most favorable light possible to the US, it is hard to agree with Obama’s recent assertion that the CIA has a “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” before each drone attack.

July 23, 2013 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

10 killed in drone attack on North Waziristan mosque

By Malik Mumtaz Khan & Mushtaq Yusufzai | The News | May 25, 2012

MIRANSHAH/ PESHAWAR: Ten people were killed and three others seriously injured in yet another US drone attack, this time on a mosque in Hasukhel village in the Mir Ali subdivision of North Waziristan Agency early Thursday.

This was the second missile attack by pilotless US spy planes in North Waziristan in the last two days. Reports said the victims included foreign militants, believed to be Turkmen. Villagers and officials of the political administration, however, insisted that all the worshippers were local residents. Tribal sources said the drone fired two missiles and pounded the village mosque where the tribesmen were offering the Fajr (morning) prayers.

“Some of the people had offered the prayers and were leaving the mosque. Others were still praying and some were reciting the Holy Quran, when the drone fired two missiles and struck the mosque. The small structure of the mosque was demolished in the attack and those present inside were buried under the debris of the building,” a tribesman, Mohammad Roshan Dawar, said.

Talking to The News from Hasukhel village by phone, he said four US spy planes were seen flying over the area at the time of the attack. He said a large number of villagers later arrived there and helped retrieve the bodies of the slain men and those injured in the attack.

The tribesman said some houses located close to the mosque were also damaged in the missile strike, but did not cause any loss of life to the inmates. He said bodies of the slain men were mutilated beyond recognition.

“Their bodies were almost burnt and could not be recognised easily. It was a horrible scene as the villagers were offering prayers and reciting the Holy Quran in the mosque but within minutes there was devastation and human bodies lying everywhere,” the tribesman recalled.

Tribal sources said three people seriously injured in the attack were admitted to the Agency Headquarters Hospital in Miranshah. Pleading anonymity, a senior doctor at the Miranshah Agency Headquarters Hospital said all the three injured were in critical condition. “They were brought to us in a serious condition and had suffered multiple injuries. Also, we do not have any facility here in the hospital to save lives of seriously injured patients. Let alone other facilities, the only X-ray machine at the hospital is also out of order,” the doctor said.

Government officials based in Mir Ali confirmed that the drone had targeted the village mosque. Drones in the past had pounded schools, houses, Hujras and even the tribal Jirgas were not spared, but this was the first time that a mosque was attacked in North Waziristan. This was the 13th drone attack in North Waziristan this year.

May 25, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

NATO shelling leaves six injured in Pakistan

Daily Times | March 2, 2012

MIRANSHAH: Six tribesmen were critically injured when six mortar shells fired by NATO forces in Afghanistan landed in Zairai village of Tehsil Dattakhel in North Waziristan Agency on Thursday.

Official sources said that NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan fired six mortar shells into Dattakhel area of North Waziristan, the tribal area considered by the US as a stronghold of al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, seriously injuring six tribesmen. The injured were shifted to hospital.

The incident sparked panic among the locals, who complained that the US was trying to crush the tribesmen through such attacks. It is pertinent to mention here that on Wednesday, US jets violated Pakistan’s airspace. The government of Pakistan has repeatedly asked NATO forces to abstain from violations of its border.

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March 2, 2012 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment