According to a Pakistani security official, At least eight suspected militants were killed and four others injured by an American drone in Pakistan’s tribal regions on Friday. The death toll rose to 15 when seven more bodies were recovered, the resident said.
The recent drone attack by American forces is said to be first attack after the killing of Osmab bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, in an American helicopter raid early Monday in Abbottabad, a small garrison city about a two-hour drive from the capital Islamabad.
The latest attack took place at noon on Friday in Dua Toi, and the official said four of the dead were foreign fighters, but their nationalities were not known yet.
The missiles hit a car near a roadside restaurant and a compound where the militants had been invited for lunch by commanders affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the top commander in North Waziristan. He is a close ally of the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda, and has reached a truce with the Pakistani military, though he is involved in fighting against the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The drone campaign, which files drones from a base inside Pakistan, has long been a sore point with the Pakistani public of what is widely considered its violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and has been publicly condemned by the government, while privately tolerating them in an arrangement with the United States.
After the killing of two Pakistanis by a C.I.A contractor in January has inflamed the sovereignty issue further, while, the raid on Bin Laden has put new pressure on that alliance.
Another raid like the one that killed Bin Laden would not be tolerated and has repeated a demand the number of American troops in Pakistan be reduced, Pakistan’s army, Gen ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on Thursday.
The drone attacks has provide to be an effective way of reaching al-Qaeda militants in pakistani’s tribal region on the Afghan border, and the Friday’s attacks showed what the American’s have insisted that they will continue to the drone campaign.
