Suspected US drone missile strike kills 2 in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area

Suspected US drone strike kills 2 in Pakistan

MIR ALI, Pakistan — Intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. drone missile strike has killed at least two people in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region.

The officials say Sunday’s strike targeted the house of a well-known tribesman near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan. At least two bodies have been recovered from the destroyed compound.

It was unclear if the two killed were militants or civilians.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

U.S. officials rarely discuss the missile strikes.

Although Pakistan’s government publicly condemns them as violations of its sovereignty, many analysts believe the two countries have a secret deal allowing them.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

PARACHINAR, Pakistan (AP) — Roadside bombs struck two vehicles in Pakistan’s volatile northwest Sunday, killing a former irrigation minister and three others in one attack and two anti-Taliban tribal elders in the other.

Public officials and private citizens combatting the growing Taliban-led insurgency in Pakistan have been frequent targets in a wave of violence that has killed more than 600 people in the past two-and-a-half months.

A single attack two days ago killed nearly 100 people when a suicide car bomber struck a sports event near a meeting of tribesmen who supervise an anti-Taliban militia near Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area.

The Pakistani army invaded South Waziristan in mid-October in an attempt to neutralize the Pakistani Taliban’s main stronghold in the country, but many militants fled the offensive and have been launching attacks elsewhere in the northwest.

A roadside bomb struck a vehicle in the Hangu district of North West Frontier Province on Sunday, killing former Irrigation Minister Ghaniur Rehman, his two guards and his driver, said district police chief Abdur Rasheed. Two police officers accompanying the former minister were wounded in the attack, he said.

Rehman was affiliated with the Pakistan People’s Party (Sherpao group) headed by former Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, who has survived two suicide bomb attacks.

Several hours earlier, another roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying anti-Taliban elders in the Bajur tribal area, killing two and critically wounding four others, said local official Naseeb Shah. The six men were working to set up an anti-Taliban militia in Bajur, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border, said Shah.

The men were on their way to meet local officials in the main town of Khar when the remote-controlled device detonated, Shah said. The blast occurred near Kassai, about 17 miles (28 kilometers) northeast of Khar, he said.

The Pakistani military carried out an anti-Taliban offensive in Bajur in 2008 and 2009 that it declared a success. But the militants have maintained their presence, and violence has flared in the region since then.

The bullet-riddled bodies of a man and a woman were found in the Mamund area of Bajur on Sunday with a note saying they were guilty of violating Islamic law, local official Faromosh Khan said.

Militants have stepped up attacks in other parts of the northwest as well in apparent retaliation for the recent South Waziristan offensive.

The suicide car bombing in the northwest village of Shah Hasan Khel near South Waziristan that killed 96 people on New Year’s Day was one of the deadliest attacks since the army launched the operation.

Police believe the attacker meant to detonate his 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of explosives at the meeting of anti-Taliban tribesman. Instead, the blast went off at a nearby outdoor volleyball court, leveling some three dozen mud-brick homes and covering the village in Lakki Marwat district with dust, smoke and the smell of burning flesh.

Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, the chief minister of Northwest Frontier Province, where Lakki Marwat is located, said recent military operations had put militants on the defensive and they were lashing out.

“They are running and they are targeting citizens,” Hoti told reporters after visiting victims of the bombing being treated at a hospital in the provincial capital of Peshawar.

“Militants and militancy is a cancer, and our struggle against it will continue until it vanishes completely,” he said.

None of the elders meeting at the time of Friday’s attack were killed, and they insisted residents will keep defying the Taliban.

Across Pakistan’s northwest, where the police force is thin, underpaid and under-equipped, various villages and tribes have taken security into their own hands over the past two years by setting up citizen militias to fend off the Taliban.

The government has encouraged such “lashkars,” and in some areas they have proven key to reducing militant activity. The militias helped turn the tide against militants when the army conducted its offensive in Bajur.

Pakistani tribal leaders who face off with the militants do so at grave personal risk. Several suicide attacks have targeted meetings of anti-Taliban elders, and militants often go after individuals.

Associated Press writers Anwarullah Khan in Khar, Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Zarar Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad.