Pakistani soldiers battled Taliban fighters in an attempt to seize
precious debris from a suspected U.S. drone that crashed in a rugged
tribal area near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials
and militants said Sunday.
The Taliban said they shot down the
unmanned aircraft, which crashed Saturday night near Jangara village in
the South Waziristan tribal area.
Pakistani intelligence
officials said they were not certain whether Taliban fire or technical
problems brought down the drone. Drone crashes have happened before in
Pakistan, but they are rare.
Pakistan first learned of the crash
by intercepting Taliban radio communications, said the intelligence
officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk to the media.
The debris was first seized by
the Taliban. Several hours later, the Pakistani army sent soldiers in
to wrest it out of militant hands, sparking a fight with the Taliban in
which three militants were killed, said the officials. Three militants
and two soldiers were also wounded in the clash, they said.
The
intelligence officials said the troops were successful in seizing the
debris, but Pakistani Taliban commander Azmatullah Diwana claimed his
fighters repelled the soldiers. The army then sent helicopter gunships
into the area where the militants were holding the debris, Diwana told
The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Nawab
Khan, a government official in South Waziristan, confirmed the drone
crash and the subsequent clash between militants and army troops. But
he did not know whether the soldiers were successful in seizing the
debris.
Neither the Pakistani army nor the U.S. Embassy responded to request for comment.
The
U.S. normally does not acknowledge the covert CIA-run drone program in
Pakistan, but U.S. officials have said privately that the attacks have
killed many high-level militants — most recently, al-Qaida's second in
command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, and its chief of operations in Pakistan,
Abu Hafs al-Shahri.
President Barack Obama has dramatically
increased the number of drone attacks against militants in Pakistan's
semiautonomous tribal region since taking office in 2009 — partly in
response to Pakistan's failure to target militants who stage attacks
against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials regularly
denounce the drone attacks as violations of the country's sovereignty,
but the government is widely believed to have supported the strikes in
the past and even allowed the aircraft to take off from bases within
Pakistan.
That support has come under strain in recent months,
especially in the wake of the U.S. commando raid that killed al-Qaida
chief Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town on May 2. The
Pakistanis were outraged that the U.S. didn't tell them about the
operation beforehand.
Elsewhere in Pakistan's tribal region,
militants attacked a security checkpoint killing a policeman and two
members of an anti-Taliban militia, said Farooq Khan, a local
government administrator.
The attack took place late Saturday
night in the Aka Khel area of the Khyber tribal region, said Khan. The
checkpoint is located on a key route that NATO uses to transport
supplies to forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Security forces and
local tribesmen fought back against the militants, killing 10 of them,
said Khan.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
But the Pakistani Taliban have staged frequent attacks against security
forces and tribesmen who have opposed them. AP
