Wednesday, September 3, 2008
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — NATO helicopter gunships attacked three houses near a stronghold of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region early Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including women and children, according to local residents, a Taliban commander and the governor of the North-West Frontier Province.
The attacks were aimed at three houses in the village of Jala Khel in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan, less than a mile from the border with Afghanistan, the Taliban commander and local residents said.
The helicopter attacks occurred at about 3 a.m. and killed 20 people, according to the provincial governor, Owais Ahmed Ghanisaid.
The governor, the most powerful civilian leader in the province which abuts South Waziristan, condemned the attacks and called for retaliation by Pakistan.
An American military spokesman at Bagram airbase declined to comment on the reports. The spokesman did not deny that the attack had occurred. Often, a statement of no comment by American and NATO spokesmen in Afghanistan, where NATO and American forces are fighting militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda, indicates that the coalition forces were involved in a cross-border attack.
A Taliban commander, known by the nom de guerre Commander Malang, said the attack took place close to a Pakistani military position on the border and killed 15 people. But the Pakistani military took no action, he said.
The incursion of NATO and American aircraft and helicopters into Pakistan in so-called hot pursuit of Taliban militants is a contentious issue for Pakistan.
Publicly, the Pakistani authorities say their country’s sovereignty must be respected and always condemn such intrusions.
At the same time, Washington has become more vocal about increased attacks by Taliban and Al Qaeda forces crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan to fight coalition forces.
There had been growing expectation among Pakistanis that NATO units would respond by attacking more forcefully into Pakistani territory.
The Angoor Adda area is on the border with Afghanistan, and its mud-walled compounds are known as a center of Taliban and Al Qaeda strength.
Sher Khan, a phone company employee in Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.
A Pakistani intelligence official in South Waziristan said in a telephone interview that a group of Taliban had crossed the border into Afghanistan before an attack late Tuesday. In response, the Afghan National Army called for air support, the intelligence official said, speaking in return for customary anonymity.
The NATO helicopters chased the Taliban militants across the border back into South Waziristan, according to the intelligence official’s account.
But the Taliban militants escaped, the official said.
A spokesman at Inter Services Public Relations, the arm of the Pakistani military that provides information to reporters, said efforts were still being made to investigate the attack.
|Sources NYTIMES|
A federal grand jury yesterday indicted an American-trained behavioral scientist on charges that she tried to shoot and kill U.S. personnel in Afghanistan in July, when they prepared to question her as a terrorism suspect.
Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national who lived in the United States for 12 years, faces a possible life sentence for allegedly grabbing a U.S. Army officer's M-4 rifle while she was detained, shooting at another Army officer and threatening all seven members of an Army and FBI interview team before she was shot and subdued.
She is scheduled to appear tomorrow in federal court in New York in connection with the seven felony counts, including attempted murder and assault.
Defense attorneys contend that Siddiqui, 36, was "disappeared" and imprisoned for an unspecified period before the shootout and has been set up by authorities.
"These are totally ludicrous claims," said one of the attorneys, Elizabeth Fink. "A woman gets in a cab, never to be seen again, and five years later, she shows up in Afghanistan and gets a gun away from the U.S. military. This stuff is from the Dark Side."
A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the agency had no knowledge of Siddiqui's whereabouts before her July arrest in Afghanistan's Ghazni province, and that she was not in U.S. custody before then.
Siddiqui, a longtime Boston resident who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, vanished with her three children outside her parents' home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003. At the time, U.S. officials were seeking to question her about suspected links to al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Her disappearance has since become a cause celebre in Pakistan, where activists say the Pakistani government arrested and secretly detained her in 2003 at the behest of the United States.
Yesterday's indictment is based on events that U.S. officials allege occurred a day after Siddiqui and one of her children, an 11-year-old son, surfaced in Afghanistan and were arrested by local police. According to the indictment, Siddiqui was arrested July 17 carrying handwritten notes that referred to a "mass casualty attack" and contained the names of U.S. locations, including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. They said she also had notes describing the construction of bombs, explosives, and chemical and biological weapons.
Federal authorities are not pursuing in court the accusations they have leveled against Siddiqui in recent years. However, conviction on the attempted murder and firearm charges could put her in prison for life.
In 2004, the Justice Department said Siddiqui was an al-Qaeda "fixer" who helped terrorism suspects with travel documents and plots. She was of particular interest to the United States because she allegedly had married Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, after a divorce from her first husband.
A biographical summary of terrorism suspects by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence described Siddiqui as part of a ring of "al-Qaeda operatives and facilitators," and said she helped another suspect, Majid Khan, with travel documents.
Khan is in custody in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
|Sources Washington Post|
Officials and witnesses in north-west Pakistan say at least 15 people have been killed in an attack involving US-led forces from Afghanistan.
The attack is said to have involved helicopters in the tribal area of South Waziristan, close to the Afghan border.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan told the Associated Press that it had no report of any such incident.
Security has deteriorated sharply in recent weeks along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan.
There is mounting US pressure on the Pakistani government to crack down on militants, who use the border region to launch raids into Afghanistan.
The Afghan government and Nato say that the border region is a haven for al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. Pakistan says it is doing all it can to curb militancy.
The BBC's Dilawar Khan Wazir says witnesses told him Nato troops in three helicopters landed in the Musa Nikeh area, located on the border with Afghanistan, at about 0300 (2100 GMT).
Most people in the area were awake at this early hour because of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Some of the troops entered the house of a local tribesman, opened fire and then lobbed a bomb in the house, witnesses said.
They said at least nine bodies had been recovered from the debris. They included two women and two children.
The witnesses said the family was not known for links with militants.
On Monday, Pakistan's military suspended its operations against Taleban militants in the neighbouring Bajaur tribal area.
The government said this suspension of fighting was in honour of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Taleban spokesman Maulvi Omar welcomed the announcement, but he said militants would not lay down their arms.
|Sources bbc.co.uk|
