MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — A US missile strike targeting a militant
compound killed five rebels in Pakistan's tribal badlands near the
Afghan border on Friday, security officials said.
The strike took
place in Ghwakhwa area, 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Wana, the
main town of South Waziristan tribal region, where the military
launched an operation two years ago.
"A US drone fired three missiles on a militant compound, killing five rebels," a senior security official in the area told AFP.
Another
security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the
"identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known".
Friday's
attack was the ninth to be reported in Pakistan's tribal areas, close
to the Afghan border, since US commandos killed terror mastermind Osama
bin Laden in a raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.
The
Pakistani parliament has called for an end to US drone strikes and said
there must be no repeat of the operation that killed bin Laden, despite
the fact that President Barack Obama has reserved the right to act
again.
The raid also rocked Pakistan's seemingly powerful
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 heightened 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.
The United States does not
confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy
them in the region.
Missile attacks doubled in the area last
year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010,
compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009, according to an AFP
tally.
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 the Pakistan military to launch
a ground offensive as soon as possible.
Local newspaper The News
reported this week that Pakistan had decided to launch a "careful and
meticulous" military offensive in North Waziristan after a recent visit
by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad.
But
Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, the commander supervising all
military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told reporters on
Wednesday: "We will undertake operation in North Waziristan when we
want to."
"We will undertake such an operation when it is in our
national interest militarily," the general said, describing North
Waziristan as "calm and peaceful as it was weeks ago".
Under US
pressure to crack down on Islamist havens on the Afghan border,
Pakistan has been fighting for years against homegrown militants in
much of the tribal belt, dubbed a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda. AFP
