US drone missiles killed 18 militants in Pakistan's tribal district of
South Waziristan on Monday, destroying compounds and a vehicle in the
deadliest drone strikes for months, officials said.
Three strikes
were reported just days after Pakistani officials said they believed
senior Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri had died in a similar attack
late Friday, also in South Waziristan which borders Afghanistan.
Washington
has called Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwest tribal region the most
dangerous place on Earth and the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda.
Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked networks have carved out strongholds
there.
The first strike killed seven militants in the early hours
in Shalam Raghzai, 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Wana, the
district's main town.
A second slammed two missiles into a
compound in Wacha Dana, 12 kilometres northwest of Wana, killing eight
militants, Pakistani officials said.
The third struck the Bray
Nishtar area, which lies on the border with North Waziristan at 10:45
am (0545 GMT), about 30 kilometres from the site of the other two raids
and about eight hours later.
"A US drone fired two missiles on a
militant vehicle killing three rebels," a senior Pakistani security
official told AFP of the third attack.
Another official warned
the death toll could rise further. The combined toll of 18 made
Monday's drone strikes the deadliest reported in Pakistan since a salvo
of US missiles killed at least 35 people on March 17.
Initial
reports suggested that some foreign militants may have been killed and
that Pakistani Taliban were also targeted on Monday.
One of the
demolished compounds was near a madrassa and just south of the Ghwakhwa
area, where Kashmiri, one of Al-Qaeda's most feared operational
leaders, was reportedly killed days earlier.
Kashmiri has a US
bounty of $5 million on his head. Pakistani officials said he was the
target of a Friday drone strike in which nine members of his outlawed
Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islam (HuJI) group died.
The 47-year-old has
been blamed for high-profile attacks on Western targets, accused over
the November 2008 attacks on India's financial capital Mumbai and for
masterminding devastating attacks on Pakistan's military.
Although
the United States does not confirm Predator drone attacks, its military
and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy
the armed, unmanned aircraft in the region.
Monday's attacks
bring to 12 the number of strikes reported in Pakistan's tribal areas
since US commandos killed Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a raid in
the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.
Pakistan's parliament
has called for an end to the US missile attacks and demanded no repeat
of the operation that killed bin Laden, despite President Barack Obama
saying he reserves the right to act again.
Pakistan is on the
frontline of the US-led war on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and bomb
attacks across the country have killed more than 4,400 people in the
last four years -- blamed on militants opposed to the government's US
alliance.
On Sunday, at least 24 people were killed in two
separate bombings in the northwest -- the first at a bus terminal near
the city of Peshawar killing six people and the second killing 18 at a
bakery in the garrison town of Nowshera.
The bin Laden raid
profoundly jolted Pakistan's security establishment, with its
intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or
complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.
The
drone strikes are hugely unpopular among the general public, who are
deeply opposed to the government's alliance with Washington, and
inflame anti-US feeling, which has surged further after the bin Laden
raid.
But US officials say the missile strikes have severely
weakened Al-Qaeda's leadership and killed high-value targets including
the former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.
Most of the
attacks have been concentrated in North Waziristan, the most notorious
Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastion in Pakistan, where the United
States wants Pakistan to launch a ground offensive as soon as possible. AFP
