US drones killed 16 "militants" in a strike today on a compound
in Pakistan's Taliban-infested tribal agency of Arakzai. The strike is
the first recorded outside of Pakistan's tribal agencies of North and
South Waziristan since December 2010.
Pakistani officials
told Dawn
that the unmanned Predators or Reapers fired four missiles at a
compound in the Buland Khel area of Arakzai. The compound belonged to
Maulana Shakirullah, "who is the commander of the Hafiz Gul Bahadar
group of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Movement of the Taliban
in Pakistan)," officials told the Pakistani news agency. However,
Bahadur operates independently of the Movement of the Taliban in
Pakistan.
Shakirullah is said to be allied with the Haqqani Network and al
Qaeda. No senior al Qaeda or allied jihadist commanders from foreign
terrorist groups are reported to have been killed in the strike.
Drone strikes outside of the designated "kill boxes" in North and
South Waziristan are rare. Of the 318 drone strikes recorded by
The Long War Journal since 2004, only 17 have taken place outside of North and South Waziristan.
Today's strike is the first that has been reported outside of North
and South Waziristan since the US hit training camps belonging to
Taliban commander Tariq Afridi in the tribal agency of Khyber in four
strikes on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17 in 2010.
The US has conducted only one strike in Arakzai in the past,
on April 1, 2009.
In that strike, which targeted a Taliban compound in the town of
Khadzai, a region run by Hakeemullah Mehsud, the emir of the al
Qaeda-linked Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, 12 Taliban fighters
and al Qaeda operatives were killed and 12 more were wounded.
Hakeemullah was thought to be attending a senior Taliban leadership
meeting at the compound, but was not killed in the strike. Abdullah
Hamas al Filistini, a senior al Qaeda trainer, was among those killed in
the April 1 strike.
Washington Time
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