By IRNA,
Kabul : A pair of missile strikes hours apart killed at least 27 civilians Friday at Afghanistan-Pakistan border, only days after Pakistan demanded that the United States halt an intensifying campaign of using Predator drones to hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
US officials said that the dead in the first attack, in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, included a mid-level Al Qaeda operative, Abdur Rehman.
Local tribesmen, however, said they were not sure that he had been killed.
Residents said he had lived in the area for about three years and spoke fluent Pashtu, the language of tribes along the border.
One of Abu Akash’s sons was killed in an earlier suspected US strike in the same village, in November 2005.
The strikes using unmanned aircraft have come at a rapid pace since August, and have raised tensions between the United States and Pakistan, an ally in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism.
Many Pakistanis believe the American attacks, which Washington rarely acknowledges, are spurring militants to carry out suicide attacks in Pakistani cities, such as the bombing in September of a five-star hotel in Islamabad.
Some of the public anger over the missile strikes, which often kill and injure civilians as well as militants, is directed at Pakistan’s new government.
The 7-month-old civilian administration is struggling to contain a burgeoning financial crisis and is urgently seeking foreign help to avoid defaulting on its debt.
Pakistan’s tribal areas are a haven for many Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, and Western military commanders say these insurgents plan and carry out attacks against U.S. and other coalition troops across the border in Afghanistan.
However, the stepped-up American campaign of airstrikes has coincided with a push by the Pakistani military against insurgents, particularly in the Bajaur tribal area.
That has fueled a grievance on the part of Pakistani officials that the Bush administration is being dismissive of genuine and costly efforts to hunt down insurgent leaders.
The first of Friday’s strikes hit near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan.
Local officials said at least 24 people in Asori village were killed in the strike, which hit a vehicle and the home of a local cleric.
Two hours later, a second strike, in a village near Wana in South Waziristan, killed at least three people, according to local reports.
Angry tribesmen have taken to firing at suspected US drones when they hear them buzzing overhead, but the craft usually operate at too high an altitude to be in danger of being shot down.
Elsewhere in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, nine people were killed and about two dozen others injured earlier Friday when a suicide bomber struck outside the office of the police deputy inspector general in the town of Mardan.
Four of the dead were police officers.
Authorities said the bomber had been trying to get inside the police compound, but a guard had stopped him for a body search.