(Previous Incident Code: B13 )

A 2am attack on a madrassa in Kaloosha, Azam Warsak, killed up to thirteen militants and wounded as many as ten, local and international media reported, though it was unclear whether if any of the victims were civilians.

The death toll spanned from eight to 13 among the sources, the highest reported by AFP. While all sources reported that the killed were militants, The Pakistan Tribune reported villagers as saying that some or most of those killed were students. Pakistan Tribune is thus the only source suggesting that non-militants were among the killed, and though the weak claim, Airwars will consider it possible that up to five civilians were among the fatalities.

According to Dawn, at least eight of whom were reported to be militants linked to Maulvi Nazir, while AFP said all 13 were militants.

Four were described as ‘Arabs’ and two as ‘Chechen’, with other reports suggesting that Afghan and Punjabi militants were among the dead.

A record of drone strikes compiled by the FATA secretariat reported 10 people died and six were injured in the attack. Four of the dead were ‘local’ and the others were ‘non-local’. The News reported that ‘villagers in Kaloosha said soon after the incident, a large number of armed militants came out of their hideouts and cordoned off the area. The militants didn’t allow government officials to enter the village for collecting information about the incident.”

Moreover, sources reported up to ten wounded following the strike – but again, it was not clear whether if they were all militants. According to The News, at least two militants were wounded.

The US later secretly claimed the dead were ‘foreign Al Qaeda trainees’. According to the Washington Post, this strike and others at this time were part of a ‘shake the tree’ strategy:

“The goal was partly to jar loose information on senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, by forcing them to move in ways that U.S. intelligence analysts can detect.”

An AFP report indicated that Pakistan’s military may still have been covering for some of the CIA’s drone strikes. ‘Chief military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas told AFP that information from the area indicated the deaths were caused by explosive material stored in the house. “As per our information it was an explosion caused by explosive material in a house,” he said, adding that the blast reportedly killed 10 to 12 people. Their nationalities were not known, he said.’