(Previous Incident Code: Ob286 )

A 20-day pause in the CIA’s campaign ended with a drone strike just after noon on Shuweda in North Waziristan. A house and car were reported damaged or destroyed and up to a dozen people, possibly ‘alleged militants’ – were killed.

As AFP noted, “The attack came as people in the deeply religious region were celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, residents said. It was the third drone attack since the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.”

AP reported that those killed were allies of local Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a regular target of CIA drone strikes in connection with the insurgency in Afghanistan. ‘Uzbeks’ were said to be among the dead. Eid was declared early in Waziristan, and people appear to have been gathering for the festival.

The News reported that “the CIA-operated drone fired four missiles. Two of them hit a house located in the forest-covered mountainous Shawal Valley while two others hit vehicles parked outside a residence where a group of men had gathered for lunch in connection with Eid”.

The News was the only source to report 12 deaths, with most other sources reporting five to seven killed. Pajhwok and al Jazeera reported the dead as five ‘people’ rather than referring to them as ‘militants’.

Among those killed were 43-year-old Kashmiri militant ‘Engineer’ Ahsan Azizand his wife (the daughter of Jamaat e Islami Azad Kashmir leader Aleefud Din Turabi), according to Aziz’s father. The News reported he was ‘among the known figures of the Afghan Taliban’.

The attack was almost immediately condemned by Islamabad.

A statement from the Foreign Ministry said “Pakistan strongly protests the drone attacks in North Waziristan this morning. Pakistan has consistently maintained that these attacks are a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and are in contravention of international law.”