US drone kills nine in Pak-Afghan border area

MIRANSHAH: A US drone fired two missiles at a house reportedly being used by the Taliban militants on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There were conflicting reports whether the drone strike took place in Pakistani or Afghan territory.
Tribal sources said the drone fired two missiles and struck a house in the border village of Khawaja Qadar in the Dattakhel Tehsil of Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region. The sources said that six men and three women were killed in the drone attack.
The villagers in this remote border area said the bodies had already been pulled out of the rubble and shifted to an unknown location for burial by the time they reached the site of the drone hit.
Though local residents claimed those killed in the missile strikes were locals, there was no independent confirmation about the identity of the slain persons.
However, security officials in North Waziristan said the drone hit a house inside Afghanistan.
Pleading anonymity, security officials also claimed that nine people, including six men and three women, were killed in the attack.
“Through intercepts, we learnt that Taliban fighters in their internal communication said that nine people had become flowers, meaning they had died, and four others were injured when the drone struck a house in the Khawaja Qadar area of Afghanistan. There is some confusion about the location of the area but it is probably located inside Afghanistan,” a Pakistani security official said.
A government official insisted that the drone strike took place in the forested and mountainous Shawal Valley of North Waziristan, adding that the drone hit a compound of Pakistani Taliban commonly known as the Punjabi Taliban.
“Most of the militant groups had shifted to the mountainous areas such as Shawal Valley after the military launched an operation against them in the summer last year. Some of them are having their families and it is possible the drone killed women as well,” the government official said on condition of anonymity.
Due to a lack of proper communication system and displacement of local population following the military operation launched by the Pakistani security forces against the militants, it is difficult to independently verify such reports.