DI KHAN:
A drone crashed in the Wana sub-division of South Waziristan on Thursday night after developing a technical fault, a security official told The Express Tribune on Friday.
According to details provided by the official, the drone crashed in Rustam Bazaar in the Kaza Panga area of Azam Warsak, about 20 kilometres west of the sub-division.
“We came to know about the incident at 9pm on Thursday night,” a security official told The Express Tribune. He added that he was unaware whether the drone was American or Pakistan made.
A local who saw it early Friday morning told The Express Tribune that the drone had fallen in a deserted area. As the news spread, tribesmen gathered in large numbers around the destroyed craft, saying that there was no evidence that it had been shot down.
Local militants shifted the wreckage to the local market and put it on display. Tribesmen said that the aircraft was white, two and half metres in length and three feet deep.
“It is a 2006 model, however there is nothing written on it indicating whether it is US or Pakistan made,” another person told The Express Tribune.
He added that it had the number 1010-2709 written on it. He also said that three cameras titled ‘Made in US’, BMF-Audio, J-2-Control were installed in the aircraft.
Wana bomb blast
Local Taliban commander, Maulvi Abbas Khan, and three others were killed in a remote-controlled blast in South Waziristan on Friday, according to a local political administration official.
The explosion occurred at the office of the Taliban commander’s cousin Jalil Khan in a vegetable market. The blast killed Maulvi Abbas Khan, his 13-year-old (son) and two locals, leaving three others injured.
The official said that four injured were rushed to the nearby Agency Headquarters Hospital in Wana, where one succumbed to his injuries. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The official added that the bomb was planted on the roof of the office. The bomb destroyed the office and the blast was followed up with firing. “No heavy damage was caused to the nearby shops,” local Din Muhammad told The Express Tribune.
Abbas Khan, 47, was a resident of Azam Warsak, and belonged to the Kakakhel tribe, a sub-tribe of Zalekhel of the Ahmadzai Wazir.
He completed his education at the Darul Uloom Haqqania, a religious seminary in Akora Khattak.
His outfit consists mostly of students from religious seminaries. He went to Afghanistan during the Taliban’s regime, but after the fall of the Taliban, he returned to Wana, and became an active facilitator of foreign militants.
Maulvi Abbas, who had close links with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was a close confidant of senior Taliban commander Nek Muhammad, who was killed in a US drone strike in 2004.
Muhammad and Abbas had come under sharp criticism in the past for harbouring Uzbek, Tajik and other Central Asian militants.
(With additional input from AFP)
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2012.
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how militants never targeted drones ,after all drones are around from so many years ?
Glad ET cleared it up, for a moment I thought Pakistan Army found their mineral supplements and shot a drone.