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US drone attack kills 10 in North Waziristan
A US drone aircraft killed 10 suspected gun-hung tough guys in the North Wazoo region near the Afghanistan border on Wednesday, security officials and residents said, the fifth such strike this year.

A drone fired two missiles at a house suspected of being a terror hideout in Thapi village, 15 kilometres east of Miranshah
... headquarters of al-Qaeda in Pakistain and likely location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Haqqani network has established a ministate in centered on the town with courts, tax offices and lots of madrassas...
. The building was completely destroyed and 10 suspected bad boyz were potted, security officials said.

"Almost all the men were burnt beyond recognition," a villager said after visiting the destroyed house. "Dozens of gun-hung tough guys arrived later and took over rescue work. They pulled out nine bodies," he said, requesting anonymity. Security officials and villagers said the dead included imported muscle, but they did not specify their nationalities.

The unacknowledged Central Intelligence Agency drone programme was apparently halted after a November NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
air attack from across the Afghan border killed 24 Pak soldiers. The US resumed attacks with the missile-firing drones in northwest Pakistain on January 10.

While the Haqqani faction says it no longer needs a sanctuary in North Waziristan and has made enough battlefield gains in Afghanistan to stay there, it is known to still operate in the Pak border region.

A Pashtun tribal elder said gun-hung tough guys usually avoided gathering, limiting groups to three or four people to minimise losses in the event of a drone attack. But they had dropped their guard recently.

"It has been freezing cold in the last few days and then there were no drones for some time. That's why the gun-hung tough guys started living together and suffered heavy losses," the elder, who declined to be identified, told Rooters.

The use of the unmanned aircraft over Pakistain is opposed by most members of the public and Pak politicians, who regard the attacks as violations of illusory sovereignty that produce unacceptable civilian casualties.
Posted by: Fred 2012-02-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=338713