Pak drone Burraq kills three militants in first attack

MIRANSHAH: Pakistan for the first time used its own missile-firing drone in the remote Shawal Valley in the North Waziristan Agency on Monday, killing three militants, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.
Major General Asim Salim Bajwa, Director-General ISPR, in a posting on Twitter said the drone “Burraq” attacked a suspected hideout of militants in the Shawal Valley, considered a militant stronghold on the border with Afghanistan.
This is the first-ever use of a Pakistan-made unmanned aircraft in the war against terrorism.
The ISPR head said the drone hit a terrorist compound in Shawal and killed three high profile terrorists. Major General Bajwa, however, did not provide further information about the identity of the killed militants.
It is not clear whether the CIA will cease its drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas now that Pakistan has officially announced using its own missile-firing unmanned aircraft. It would, however, help security forces in going after targets hiding in inaccessible mountainous areas.
According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism that monitors drone strikes through media reports, the CIA-operated US drones have killed more than 2,400 people in Pakistan since 2004.
Security forces are engaged in the fight against the militants in the Shawal Valley for the last three weeks and have reportedly occupied some of the mountain peaks.
The troops established posts in the areas which they had secured from the militants, official sources said.
North Waziristan has been out of bound for the media after Pakistan launched a massive military offensive against the militants on June 15, 2014.
Munir Khan Afridi adds from Bara: Five members of the pro-government organisation, Tauheedul Islam (TI), were killed in the Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency, sources said on Monday.
The sources said the TI members, belonging to the Bazaar Zakhakhel area, were patrolling in the Kamarkhel area when unidentified gunmen arrested them a day earlier.
The banned Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) claimed responsibility for the killings. Its spokesman Salahuddin Ayubi phoned reporters from an undisclosed place to claim that their men had killed the five pro-government fighters.
However, independent sources said the members of the TI were smuggling hashish (charas) when unknown gunmen fired at them in the Zaoddin area in Tirah.
One version is that the victims Noor Hakeem, Siyal Jan, Muhammad Said, Samin and Mubeen, were gunned down on Monday after being kept in captivity for 24 hours.
This area has been a battlefield for some time now. Local sources said security forces had already secured the mountain tops in Akakhel, Kamarkhel, Sipah and Kokikhel when operations Khyber-1 and Khyber-2 were launched.
The clashes between the pro-government TI and the outlawed LI have been continuing for the last six years.
About 300 fighters of the LI and TI have been killed and many more injured after the latter formed a pro-government organisation in Bazaar Zakhakhel.