(Previous Incident Code: Ob319 )

A night-time drone strike reportedly killed at least six people, alleged militants, and wounded up to four others on the border of North and South Waziristan, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The strike took place ‘shortly after sunset in a forested area’, the Washington Post reported, while Xinhua cited Urdu TV channel Dunya saying the drone attacked at 10pm. Dawn reported six died and Reuters put the death toll at nine, whereas most other outlets put the death toll at seven. Among other sources, the Washington post reported on four people who were “seriously hurt”.

According to the New York Times, the identities of the victims were not immediately known but were described as militants by an intelligence official who spoke on conditions of anonymity.

‘The US drone fired two missiles targeting a militant compound and killing at least seven militants,’ an unnamed senior intelligence official told AFP. The dead included ‘some high value target’, an unnamed official told Dawn, adding that two missiles hit a home in the village of Mangroati in the Shawal tehsil (area). Other reports named the village as Shokhel.

The attack was later reported to have killed a ‘key Pakistan Taliban commander’ named Mutaqi aka (Bahadar Khan), according to Dawn, adding that intelligence intercepts showed Mutaqi and his men ‘were planning to cross over into Afghanistan via Pash Ziarat valley’. However the News International reported that the strike took place as a vehicle was arriving from Afghanistan. An unnamed local official said to the News International: ‘A vehicle was coming from the Afghan border and was about to enter the house when the drone fired two missiles and hit it and the house as well.’

In March 2014 the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was given a Pakistani intelligence assessment of the strike that listed Mutaqi’s markaz, or base of operations, but showed that the commander survived. It listed 11 Pakistanis killed, all allegedly members of the TTP:

Commander Hamat
Haneef
Arbab
Farhad
Zuabir
Zahidullah
Abdullah Noor
Umar Sadeeq
Nazeerullah
Omer Nawaz
Tariq

The assessment also listed alleged Pakistani TTP members Darwaish and Janab Khan as injured in the attack.

The attack came two days after new prime minister Nawaz Sharif used his inaugural address to call for an end to drone strikes. ‘We respect the sovereignty of others and they should respect our sovereignty and independence. This campaign must come to an end,’ he told MP’s as reported by BBC. The following day, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned Richard Hoagland, deputy chief of the US mission in Pakistan, to protest at the strike, on Sharif’s instructions. Tariq Fatimi, a special adviser on foreign affairs, met with Hoagland to convey Pakistan’s objections, according to a government statement.