(Previous Incident Code: Ob336 )

Up to six civilians were killed in an airstrikes in Madakhel village. The majority of sources reported that those that were killed were militants but Xinhua and IANS reported that the identity of those killed was not known. As many as seven militants were killed and between two and three others were injured.

At least six people were reportedly killed when CIA drones destroyed a house and vehicle near Datta Khel. Initial reports said the attack killed four foreign fighters and two local men. Nationality, or being defined as “local” or “non-local” is the only identity ascribed to people who die nameless in drone strikes. Subsequent reports conflicted over the nationality of the dead. Some had all the dead as foreigners – three central Asians, reportedly Uzbeks, and three Afghans. However another report said four of the dead were “Arabs” and three were local men.

The Long War Journal later reported that six men killed in the attack were al Qaeda members. Three of them were named by a senior member of the organisation: Fayez Awda al Khalidi, Taj al Makki and Abu Abdurahman al Kuwaiti. Al Makki, a Saudi, and al Kuwaiti, from Kuwait, were described as “mid-level” members of al Qaeda by anonymous US sources.

A local man said the dead were buried in secret and the time and location was not announced over loudspeakers by the Taliban, which they normally do when locals are killed The News reported. The local man added:

“It was around 5:00 am when heavy explosions were heard in the Doga Madakhel village. After the blast, the Taliban militants were seen running towards the village and surrounded the area after reaching there.”

The strike came after a concerted offensive by the Pakistan military in North Waziristan. And it came the same day as the Pakistan army declared it had cleared militants from 80% of Miranshah – the region’s capital, 35km east of the site of this strike. The military took a group of journalists on a tour of the newly cleared areas.

According to Reuters, North Waziristan has been sealed off to reporters, ‘but the presence of many senior officers during the tour suggested that the army had secured broad control over the area’. AFP reported: ‘The once-bustling town is now virtually deserted, the rubble of countless bombed-out buildings strewn across the dusty streets.’ More than 800,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.

The attack hit in an area said to be controlled by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, ‘a Pakistani militant commander who has played a central role in mobilizing fighters to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan’ according to the New York Times. Bahadur was reportedly aligned with the Pakistan government though not to be spared from the military offensive, according to the Miranshah army commander Major General Zafarullah Khan.

In September 2014, it emerged that a Saudi al Qaeda member died in a drone strike at around this time in North Waziristan. The man was reportedly Umer Talib, also known as Adil Salih Ahmad al Qumayshi, according to the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE). In 2011 he was included on a list of Saudi Arabia’s ‘47 most wanted terrorists‘. The report from SITE suggests Talib was killed in a drone strike two months prior to the report in North Waziristan. There are therefore three strikes – Ob336, Ob337 and Ob338 –  within the time window for his death. It is not yet clear which drone strike he was killed in.

Also in September, it emerged that Sufyan al Maghribi, al Qaeda’s operations commander in Pakistan and Afghanistan was also killed in a drone attack. However it was not clear when he was killed, or if he died in a strike in Afghanistan or Pakistan.