(Previous Incident Code: Ob281 )

CIA attacks resumed after a 12 day pause, when missiles struck a house in Shawal in North Waziristan late in the evening, killing up to seven people. Local officials told AFP that the target was militants linked to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leader involved in the Afghan insurgency but with a peace agreement with Pakistan.The attack came the day before Pakistan’s top military commander, General Kayani, was due to hold talks with General John Allen, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, to discuss ways to improve relations. As Pakistan’s The News noted: ‘This was the first attack by the CIA-operated pilotless planes in North Waziristan after the local Taliban, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, banned the anti-polio immunisation campaign in the tribal region as a mark of protest against the US drone strikes.’

In August 2012 Taliban sources erroneously claimed Shahbaz Taseer died in a strike on the Shawal in 2012. The source said he was buried in the area that day and a jirga (council) assembled to negotiate his release had disbanded and gone home ‘in sheer disappointment’. But in September 2013 this report was contradicted by ‘sources close to the abductors‘. Taseer, son of Salman Taseer the murdered governor of Punjab province, was snatched from a Lahore street as he drove to work in August 2011. The captors had demanded the release of 24 prisoners and 4bn rupees (£24.5m) ransom. And the captors had reportedly sent a number of audio and video messages to Taseer’s family in 2013. In 2016, Taseer was freed from captivity by Pakistani security forces. He was being held in Baluchistan – in Kuchlak, a town near the provincial capital Quetta.

July 2012