(C)overt war: Two drone strikes kill 8 in Khyber, North Waziristan

The dead include al Qaeda member, TTP commander.

PESHAWAR/ ISLAMABAD/ BANNU:

At least eight suspected militants — including a senior member of al Qaeda’s South Asia franchise and a key Taliban commander — were killed and three others wounded in two US predator strikes in the Khyber and North Waziristan tribal regions on Saturday.

In the first attack that took place around noon, a remotely piloted aircraft fired two missiles at a compound in the Chancharano Kandaw area of the remote Tirah Valley in Khyber Agency, tribal sources told The Express Tribune. They added that militants fleeing a military offensive in North Waziristan lived in the compound which was located in the area dominated by tribesmen from Kokikhel, a sub-clan of the Afridi tribe.

Sources said that the missiles flattened the compound, killing four suspected militants and injuring two others. Among the dead were militants from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, commonly known as the Afghan Taliban. The casualties were shifted across the border, since the area where the predator struck is close to the Nazyan district of Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

A purported spokesperson for the newly established al Qaeda franchise for the Indian Subcontinent, said that a senior member of his group, Sheikh Imran Ali Siddiqi, aka Haji Shaikh Waliullah, was also among the dead.

Last month, al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri had announced the formation of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, calling upon Muslims across the region to join the ‘caravan of jihad’.



The group’s spokesperson, Osama Mehmood, said on his official Twitter page that Shaikh Waliullah, a member of the Central Council of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, had spent eight years in jail in connection with one of the attacks on the US Consulate in Karachi. “He [Siddiqi] has been engaged in jihad since 1990,” he added.

The spokesman had earlier stated that the drone strike had killed two of the group’s members. “The mujahideen brethren were present atop a mountain when the drones rained missiles, martyring them at the scene,” he tweeted on the microblogging site.

The chief of al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent, Maulana Asim Omar ‘congratulated’ the group’s members on the ‘martyrdom’ of Shaikh Waliullah, the spokesman said. “We mujahideen are sacrificing lives for the protection of life and property of Muslims,” Omar said.

A large number of local and foreign militants had sneaked into the remote mountainous Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency after Pakistani military launched a massive operation in North Waziristan, codenamed Operation Zarb-e-Azb, in mid-June. The Taliban militants on both sides of the Durand Line continuously liaise with each other for big attacks against foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The second drone attack targeted a vehicle carrying suspected militants in the Shawal tehsil of North Waziristan Saturday evening. According to the local political administration, the predator fired two missiles at a vehicle carrying suspected militants in the Margha area, some 65 kilometres away from the agency headquarters Miramshah. The vehicle was en route to Afghanistan.

A political administration official claimed that four militants, including a key TTP commander, Muhammad Mustafa, were killed in the attack. The rest of the dead were foreigners, he said but didn’t say which country they belonged to. Local tribesmen rushed to the spot to rescue the people from the vehicle which had caught fire after the strike.

Local tribesmen reported that US drones were buzzing overhead in Miramshah, Dattakhel and Shawal tehsils of North Waziristan till the filing of this report.

In a related development, security forces detained 14 suspects while travelling on Gomal Zam Road, the highway that links Wana, the headquarters of South Waziristan Agency, with Tank and DI Khan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials and local sources confirmed to The Express Tribune.

The suspects – two women and 12 children – are said to be Arab nationals. They were detained at a checkpoint of paramilitary Frontier Corps on Gomal Zam Road and subsequently shifted to an unidentified location for questioning. The suspects were coming from Wana, an erstwhile stronghold of the TTP which has been the target of several US drone strikes in the past.

Separately, three suspected militants were killed in clashes between two factions of the TTP in Tirah Valley on Saturday. Local sources said militants from TTP’s Mohmand and Orakzai chapters clashed in the Mehraban Kallay area of Koki Khel. However, it wasn’t known what triggered the clash.

Both sides fired heavy weapons at each other’s positions and three fighters were killed in the clash which was continuing at the time this report was filed.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2014.