Two US missile attacks kill 13 in Pakistan

By Nadeem Sarwar
dpa

ISLAMABAD – Two U.S. drone strikes on Sunday killed at least 13 militants in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.

The attacks, about an hour apart, took place in North Waziristan, a mountainous district known as a hotbed of Taliban and al-Qaida militants conducting cross-border raids into Afghanistan on NATO-led international forces.

An intelligence official said a an unmanned drone fired two missiles into a house in the village of Ghulam Khan, killing nine people and wounding two.

About an hour later, a similar attack destroyed a vehicle in the Datta Khel area. Four people died in the attack, said a second intelligence official, who, like the first one, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Both officials claimed all those killed were “miscreants,” a term used officially to refer to Islamist insurgents. However, the claim could not be independently confirmed since the area remains almost inaccessible to reporters and aid workers.

Earlier on Sunday, residents of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, recovered the bodies of three people who were called U.S. spies. The bodies dumped on a roadside.

All three had been shot and a letter attached to their bodies warned that “everyone spying for the Americans will meet the same fate,” a local official said.