(Previous Incident Code: Ob146 )

Six to 14 people were killed in a triple-linked strike over the course of an hour, due to alleged US drones.

The strikes killed up to 14 alleged militants, including ‘three foreigners’ or Turkmeni members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. As many as six rescuers, all reported initially as ‘militants’, were killed as they tried to retrieve casualties from a bombed house and car.

AP, for example, reported local officials as saying,”The final attack targeted militants collecting bodies from the house destroyed in the first strike, killing two of them.”

Local photographer Noor Behram, who visited the scene, instead said that ‘six locals’ had died. The Bureau’s own researchers in Waziristan reported that three rescuers were civilians, named as Bashir, Wajid and Laiq.  A report by Associated Press appeared to contradict this, stating that only ‘eleven militants, including four foreigners, died.’

The day before the attack, Pakistan’s prime minister publicly criticised the CIA’s drone campaign, telling reporters: ‘We have successfully isolated the militants and local tribesmen, because we want that local tribesmen should support us, but when there is a drone attack that unites them again. And this is the reason we say that they are counter-productive.’