Drone Attack Report Indicates Two Militants Killed In Pakistan

An initial drone attack report suggests that two militants have been killed in Pakistan, but few solid details have yet become available about the Sunday incident.

The unconfirmed drone attack report comes out of Pakistan from Taliban and and Pakistani officials, in the unstable North Waziristan tribal region. The alleged attack remains unconfirmed by US officials, but it is the first of its sort in Waziristan in over two months.

Pakistani officials speaking on condition of anonymity provided the drone attack report to US media sources, and the New York Times reports that “two Pakistani officials, one in Peshawar and another in the tribal belt, said that missiles fired from a drone operated by the C.I.A. hit the two people in the village of Degan, about 20 miles from Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan.”

The paper notes that the drone attack report is not very detailed, and even those on the ground in Waziristan seem to express some confusion over the incident as well as its scope. One of the officials that commented admitted that “details are sketchy,” adding that Pakistani officials “don’t know the identity of those killed, and our local contacts say the bodies were unrecognizable and beyond recognition. We don’t know if they were locals or foreign militants.”

The drone attack report was partially confirmed by a Taliban spokesman in Miram Shah, who indicated that two militants on a motorcycle were killed in the attack but that the Taliban “cannot confirm their nationality and group affiliation at the moment.”

In recent weeks, the US denied a previous drone attack report, saying two in early February had not been the work of US drones and rather were due to traditional airstrikes by other forces. Pakistani officials disagreed with the US claim and rejected the denial of the use of drones in those two attacks.