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Pakistan troops battle Taliban for US drone debris
[Dawn] Pak soldiers battled Taliban fighters in an attempt to seize precious debris from a suspected US drone that crashed in a rugged tribal area near the Afghan border, Pak intelligence officials and faceless myrmidons said Sunday.The Taliban said they shot down the unmanned aircraft, which crashed Saturday night near Jangara village in the South  Wazoo tribal area.Pak intelligence officials said they were not certain whether Taliban fire or technical problems brought down the drone. Drone crashes have happened before in Pakistain, but they are rare. Pakistain first learned of the crash by intercepting Taliban radio communications, said the intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The debris was first seized by the Taliban. Several hours later, the Mighty Pak Army sent soldiers in to wrest it out of krazed killer hands, sparking a fight with the Taliban in which three faceless myrmidons were killed, said the officials. Three faceless myrmidons and two soldiers were also maimed in the clash, they said. The intelligence officials said the troops were successful in seizing the debris, but Pak Taliban capo Azmatullah Diwana claimed his fighters repelled the soldiers. The army then sent helicopter gunships into the area where the faceless myrmidons were holding the debris, Diwana told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named by telephone from Nawab Khan, a government official in South Waziristan, confirmed the drone crash and the subsequent clash between faceless myrmidons and army troops. But he did not know whether the soldiers were successful in seizing the debris. Neither the Mighty Pak Army nor the US Embassy responded to request for comment. The United States uses unmanned surveillance aircraft in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan to monitor faceless myrmidons in Pakistain, from where Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked fighters launch attacks in Afghanistan. It also uses Predator armed drones to launch missile attacks aimed at faceless myrmidons in Pakistain's unstable northwestern border areas. US drone crashes are very rare in Pakistain, but a surveillance drone equipped with a camera crashed in southwestern Pakistain on August 25. In September 2008, rustics in South Waziristan claimed to have shot down another surveillance drone in Jalal village, near the Afghan border. The Mighty Pak Army said at the time that it was investigating that incident but did not make the results of the probe public. The US drone campaign is deeply unpopular among an anti-American Pak public and the government has publicly demanded an end to the attacks. However, women are made to be loved, not understood... in private, Pak military and civilian leaders are thought to co-operate with the programme and Washington says it has been successful in eliminating a number of Al-Qaeda- and Taliban-linked faceless myrmidons in Pakistain. Around two dozen drone strikes have been reported in Pakistain since elite US forces killed Al-Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones... in a suburban home near Pakistain's main military academy in Abbottabad, close to the capital, on May 2. The raid humiliated Pakistain and prompted allegations of incompetence and complicity in sheltering bin Laden. Pakistain is seen as a key ally for the United States in its fight against militancy, but relations soured after the bin Laden raid, which both countries say was carried out without Islamabad being warned. Posted by: Fred 2011-09-19 |
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