Unmanned US drones struck in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal
agency of North Waziristan for the second time in 24 hours, killing
four "militants," including a senior Taliban leader linked to al Qaeda.
The Predators or the more heavily armed Reapers fired a pair of
missiles at a compound in Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan
today, according to
AFP and
Geo News.
Pakistani intelligence officials said that Badr Mansoor, a Taliban
commander with close ties to al Qaeda, was killed in the strike. Mansoor
rain training camps in the area and sent fighters to battle NATO and
Afghan forces across the border,
according to AFP. One Pakistani official told
AFP
that Mansoor was al Qaeda's chief in Pakistan. A US intelligence
official said he was a member of al Qaeda's leadership council for
Pakistan.
The Haqqani Network, a Taliban group that operates in North
Waziristan as well as in eastern Afghanistan, administers the area where
today's attack took place. Al Qaeda leaders and operatives, who are
closely allied with the Haqqani Network, shelter in the area, as do
other terror groups.
The strike is the second in 24 hours. Earlier today, the CIA-operated
drones killed 10 Haqqani Network and Central Asian fighters in an
attack on a compound in the village of Tappi, just outside of Miramshah.
The US has carried out five strikes in North Waziristan since Jan.
11. All five strikes took place in and around Miramshah. The Jan. 11
strike was the first in 55 days. The program was put on hold following a
clash between US forces and Pakistani Frontier Corps troops on the
border of the Afghan province of Kunar and the Pakistani tribal area of
Mohmand on Nov. 25-26. The US troops struck in Pakistan after taking
mortar and machine gun fire on the Afghan side of the border from
Pakistani troops. Twenty-four Pakistani Frontier Corps troops were
killed.
The pause was the longest since the program was ramped up at the end of July 2008 [see
LWJ report,
US drone strikes in Pakistan on longest pause since 2008].
The Jan. 11 strike
killed Aslam Awan,
a deputy to the leader of al Qaeda's external operations network. Awan
was a Pakistani citizen from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin
Laden was killed by US forces in a cross-border raid in May 2011. Awan
is the most senior al Qaeda leader killed in a drone strike since
mid-October, when Abu Miqdad al Masri, a member of al Qaeda's Shura
Majlis who also was involved in al Qaeda's external operations, was
killed. [For a list of senior terrorist leaders and operatives killed in
drone strikes, see
LWJ report,
Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2012.]
Abu Zubaydah al Lubnani, a Lebanese al Qaeda operative who operates
along the Afghan-Pakistani border, has said that while the drones have
"delayed some operations or even stopped them,"
the terror group is still functioning in the region.
"I want here to confirm that Qaedat al-Jihad is still standing in
Khorasan, solid and strong, despite what hit it, and it is still
producing operations and it doesn't know the path of despair...,"
Lubnani said in statement that was recently released on jihadist forums.
The statement was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.
Washington Time
Kabul Time
London Time
