(Previous Incident Code: Ob263 )

In the second drone strike of the day up to 15 alleged militants died in an attack on a pick-up truck in Mir Ali. A number of reports referred to the dead as ‘Uzbek Islamists’. In January 2014, German media reported a German national died in the strike with alleged Uzbek militants. Patrick K, a 27-year-old from Hesse in western Germany, died in the attack according to a joint report by newspaper Sud-Deutsche Zeitung and broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk. The German domestic security service had reportedly tried to recruit Patrick K as an informant before he left the country, moving to Pakistan with his Pakistani wife.

An internal assessment of drone strikes, published by the Bureau in January 2014, listed eight people killed in this attack. Contradictorily, the entry in the document listed eight dead in this strike, describing them as ‘locals’ – meaning from the Pakistani tribal agencies. However the document also said: ‘Unconfirmed reports suggest that most of the killed were foreign nationals.’

According to a Pakistani security official ‘the vehicle caught fire and the dead bodies are badly mutilated.’ Four drones were reported to take taken part, according to villagers. One told The News: ‘No one could risk his life to get close to the destroyed vehicle and retrieve bodies of the slain people due to fear of the drones which were still flying over the area even after the attack.’