North Waziristan militancy: Bomb attack on military convoy kills nine troops

Convoy was ferrying army and FC troops to Miramshah.

MIRAMSHAH:

At least nine servicemen were killed and as many injured on Sunday in a bomb attack on a military convoy in the troubled North Waziristan Agency.

According to Daily Express, the militant outfit Ansarul Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attack which took place in the Boya area on the main Datta Khel-Miramshah Road. The attack came barely a day after a US drone strike killed four suspected militants in the Eso Khel area, some 35 kilometres away from Miramshah.

The militants remotely triggered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near a convoy of up to 20 vehicles carrying army and Frontier Corps troops to Miramshah, a senior security official said.

Military sources confirmed the casualties. Initially, the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) had put the death toll at three. The injured troops were shifted to the Miramshah Fort where medics referred them to the Combined Military Hospital in Bannu city for specialised treatment.



The official said the convoy pulled up after the attack and troops called in air support before mounting a manhunt for the attackers. The troops combed the area for two hours as helicopter gunships hovered overhead. However, the official said that the search operation did not yield anything.

Local sources told The Express Tribune that the political administration of North Waziristan had clamped a curfew on most parts of the agency since morning. Announcements had been made from the loudspeakers of local mosques, asking tribesmen to stay indoors and avoid travelling on the main roads in view of the movement of the military convoy.

In other violence, suspected militants fired a rocket at a security check post in North Waziristan Agency. The rocket damaged the Gosh check post on Miramshah-Mirali Road but did not cause any casualties, a security official said. “The rocket slammed into the back side of the check post,” he added.

North Waziristan is the nerve centre of militancy where al Qaeda fighters and their Taliban cohorts have found a safe haven. US officials believe that the Haqqani network, the deadliest of all Afghan Taliban factions, uses North Waziristan as a springboard for launching attacks on foreign troops fighting a deadly insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The lawless and inaccessible region has also been frequently targeted by US pilot-less aircraft. Four militants were killed on Saturday when a CIA drone hit a car and a compound belonging to the militants.

According to Daily Express, Ansarul Mujahideen spokesperson Abu Baseer phoned journalists from an undisclosed location to claim responsibility for the attack which, he said, was carried out to avenge Saturday’s drone strike. He warned that his group would continue to launch such attacks in retaliation for drone strikes.


Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2013.