(Previous Incident Code: Ob221 )

An alleged US drone strike killed up to eight people, including at least five civilians, as it struck a moving vehicle in Mir Ali, north Waziristan, local and international media reported.

The strike came in the wake of two other alleged US strikes on the same day, both taking place in south Waziristan.

In this north Waziristan strike, a car was destroyed and between three and eight people were reported killed on the Mir Ali-Miranshah road. While Dawn reported the highest death toll at eight, many others said that around four to six were killed. Only PakTribune said that three were killed.

Though several reports, such as AFP, claimed that the killed were militants, many reports, including Dawn, merely described the killed as “people” while ground research later revealed that at least five civilians most likely were among the fatalities.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s researchers in Waziristan reported:

“Civilians belonging to the Zangbar family of the Toorikhel Wazir tribe were killed. Those killed included Shahzada [or Sherzada], who was a student and was the grandson of a tribal elder Malik Shahzada, the 50-year-old head of the Toorikhel Wazir tribe. Malik Shahzada has shifted to Peshawar with his family due to fear of the local Taliban. How could he or his slain grandson be Taliban when the family had to leave their ancestral village and shift to Peshawar to avoid harm at the hand of the Taliban?”

Also killed were Akram Shah, a government employee driving the car; Atiq ur Rehman, nicknamed Tariq, a local pharmacist; Irshad Khan, who worked for Mr Rehman; and Amar Khan, a student at Miranshah college.

For the Living Under Drones study, researchers at Stanford/NYU interviewed several who knew the dead men to build up a more detailed picture of them and the incident. Akram Shah was a ‘father of three in his mid-thirties’, who worked for the Pakistani Water and Power Development Authority as a driver. Shahzada, his cousin, is described as ‘a student in his late teens or early twenties’; both men lived in a family compound in Spulga, a village 15km outside Miram Shah. Atiq ur Rehman is described as a young pharmacist who ran the Razmak Medical shop in Miranshah bazaar, and the father of four children aged under four. Irshad Khan was a teenage student who worked in the pharmacy, while Amar Khan – or Umar Khan – is described as owning a car parts shop.

The five men left Miranshah in Akram’s car that evening, heading towards Spulga, according to accounts given to Stanford/NYU researchers. On the way, it was hit by a missile – although some reports suggest up to six missiles were fired at the “speedy car.” Interviewee Abdul Qayyum Khan told researchers Amar Khan had escaped the vehicle and been hit by a separate missile. A witness described how he heard the attack from 2km away; another described the car as resembling “a sandwich bent in half.” Locals told PakTribune up to five drones were seen overhead, and remained in the area for over an hour, preventing rescue attempts.

The civilian deaths led to an outpouring of local anger, with residents using the coffins of the dead to block roads in protest.

All known sources said that the strike was the work of a US drone.