Drone attacks in Pakistan ‘linked’ to Europe terror plot

LONDON - US drone attacks have been stepped up in Pakistan to disrupt a suspected Al Qaeda plot to attack European targets, a media report said Wednesday.

The drone attacks include one on Monday which killed eight militants, among them five German nationals, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US told the BBC.

The strikes have targeted Pakistan’s tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

A British man killed by a drone last month was to head an Al Qaeda faction in Britain, according to BBC.

“The activity we see in North Waziristan, in terms of strikes and terms of measures to try to get people from Al Qaeda and associated groups, is connected to the terrorist warnings that we have heard about potential strikes in Europe,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Hussein Haqqani, told the BBC.

Haqqani said Pakistan was working with European and US intelligence agencies to prevent the suspected plans to attack Europe and that people should not panic.

Security sources say a German man detained in Afghanistan in July had provided the first information about plans to launch commando-style attacks on targets in Britain, France and Germany.

As well as Paris and London, Berlin was cited in a US warning at the weekend as a possible target for a suspected Al Qaeda plot.

Several countries have issued travel warnings to their citizens, saying they should be vigilant while travelling in Europe.

The US has carried out 26 drone strikes on Pakistan in the past month, the highest monthly total for the past six years.

Monday’s attack destroyed the house of a tribal leader with close links to a local Taliban commander in a village three kilometres from North Waziristan’s main town of Mir Ali.

Pakistani officials have said five German nationals were killed along with three other militants. A number of people were said to have been wounded.

Identification of the victims is being made more difficult because Taliban militants sealed off the area after the missile strike, taking away the remains for burial.

There have been concerns about the presence of German nationals in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

According to German media, several Islamist militants disappeared from their homes in Hamburg in 2009 and were thought to have headed for North Waziristan.

On Monday, the German interior ministry revealed that 70 Germans had been given paramilitary training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a third of them had returned home.

In August, German police shut down a mosque in Hamburg which had been used by the 9/11 attackers and which the authorities believed was again becoming a focus for extremists.

The area around Mir Ali has been known to harbour militants from a number of foreign countries in the past.

A drone strike in North Waziristan earlier in September killed a British national, Abdul Jabbar, who had been living in Punjab province.

A British security source told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that Jabbar was being groomed to head an Al Qaeda offshoot in Britain.

Intelligence agencies monitored a meeting of 300 militants in North Waziristan he attended three months ago where he was put forward as the leader of the new group, tasked with preparing commando-style attacks against targets in Britain, France and Germany, Newsnight has learnt.

British officials declined to comment on the Newsnight report.