(Previous Incident Code: B8 )

A 3.30am attack in the vicinity of the Darul Uloom Hassania madrassa run by Maulvi Noor Mohammad (see B5) killed up to four people and injured as many as nine, hereof six children, local and international media reported.

Mohammad Habib Khan, whose home was also severely damaged in the attack, told AP that the roof had collapsed, killing four “guests.”  He added: “I don’t know whether these missiles were fired from some plane or not, but those killed in the attack were not terrorists.”

Locals named the four male civilian fatalities by name, one of them a child. Though one of victims, Abdul Ghafoor, named by Dawn, was also quoted a local resident of the same name.
The paper noted:

“Their funeral near Miramshah was attended by a large number of tribesmen. Three bodies were buried in Miramshah and one sent to South Waziristan.”

Reports said that at least two and as many as nine civilians were wounded. According to The News, six out the nine wounded were children.

It remains unclear who was behind the incident and through which means and No governments, neither Pakistan nor the US, has confirmed their involvement in the strikes.

Pakistani officials claimed that that it was caused by explosives kept inside the premises, that triggered the explosion. An anonymous Pakistani official told Daily Times: “according to our reports, there was an explosion at Muhammad Habib’s house and three guests were killed.”

Meanwhile, several reported suggested US culpability.

First, a Washington Post profile of long-serving CIA Counter Terrorism Center [CTC] head ‘Roger’ reported that this period saw the introduction of the Agency’s so-called ‘signature strikes‘:

“The CTC chief proposed launching what came to be known as “signature strikes,” meaning attacks on militants based solely on their patterns of behavior. Previously, the agency had needed confirmation of the presence of an approved al-Qaeda target before it could shoot. With permission from the White House, it would begin hitting militant gatherings even when it wasn’t clear that a specific operative was in the drone’s crosshairs.”

Moreover, Daily Times cited a an intelligence official told Reuters that “the missile was probably fired by a US drone,” while locals, cited by The News, reported that a US Predator plane fired six laser-guided missiles at the house