Nine militants killed in U.S. drone, Pakistan air force strikes

PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:37am EDT

At least nine suspected militants, including two foreigners, were

killed in Pakistan's lawless tribal region in a U.S. drone strike and

a separate Pakistan military operation, security officials said on

Sunday.

Pakistan has seen a spate of militant attacks since Prime Minister

Nawaz Sharif took office last month, putting pressure on his team to

act more aggressively to curb the insurgency.



Missile strikes by unmanned U.S. aircraft have inflicted the most

damage against Taliban fighters in the mountainous areas straddling

the Afghan border in past years, sometimes with heavy civilian

casualties.



In the third such attack since Sharif came to power, two suspected

militants riding a motorcycle were struck by missiles in the Mir Ali

area of North Waziristan on Saturday night, one official said.



"The two men, probably Arab nationals, were passing through Mosaki

village when the drone fired two missiles and hit them," said the

official.



Their identities were not clear. Another security source said they

were foreign militants of Turkmen origin.



It is difficult to check the impact of drone attacks on both militants

and civilians because independent observers and journalists have

almost no access to the areas where most of the strikes occur.



The government, while condemning drone attacks as a violation of its

sovereignty, wants to appear decisive in its own efforts to combat

militants on its soil and has vowed to map out a new security strategy

to tackle the insurgency.



In a separate operation by the Pakistan Air Force, jets pounded

several militant hideouts overnight, killing seven insurgents, senior

security officials said.



"These areas are known as strongholds of the militants from where they

stage deadly attacks in Kohat and Peshawar," one official in Kohat

told Reuters on condition of anonymity.



Pakistani military officials believe mountains linking the Orakzai,

Khyber and Kurram tribal areas are one of the main strongholds for the

Taliban-linked militants in Pakistan.



Another senior military official in the northwestern frontier city of

Peshawar confirmed that air strikes had taken place "somewhere between

Orakzai and Khyber".



"We could hear the sounds of fighter jets and see flames when bombs

were dropped in the mountains," Shafqat Hussain, a local resident in

Kohat, said of the overnight operation.



Many Taliban and their al Qaeda allies fled Afghanistan to Pakistan's

tribal areas after the U.S. invasion in 2001. They retreated even

deeper into the mountains following a Pakistan army offensive in 2009,

launching attacks from places where ground forces cannot reach them.