(Previous Incident Code: Ob322 )

An alleged drone fired missiles at a house in the Shawal Valley, killing between five and eight people who local sources alleged to be militants.

News reports carried different, apparently contradictory narratives of the strike. While AP reported that five people were killed, Pakistan Today claimed a total of six and the NBC and Long War Journal reported that eight people were killed; “four Arabs and four Taliban fighters”. According to News Pakistan, three people were wounded.

Locals told NBC the drone struck as a group gathered for iftar dinner – the breaking of the fast that takes place each night during Ramadan.”The militants, including Arab fighters, were having an Iftar dinner in the compound when the drone fired two missiles. Later, an hour after the drone had disappeared, a group of militants arrived and started pulling out bodies,” tribesman Yasin Khan said. Four of the dead were Arabs, he added.

The identities of those killed was not known as the attack caused a “huge fire” in the building leaving the bodies “completely charred”. However Pakistani intelligence officials claimed the attack targeted five men who were crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan on foot, according to the Associated Press. A militant commander told the New York Times the drones targeted “a group of 10 fighters had been returning from Afghanistan after a week of battle against coalition forces in that country’s Paktika Province”.

An unnamed Pakistani Taliban commander told Reuters three al Qaeda training experts were among the dead. He said they ran a camp in Afghanistan training militants for attacks including the July 29 jailbreak in Dera Ismail Khan in which at least 250 inmates escaped. The three trainers had reportedly crossed the border from Afghanistan to try to set up a training camp in Pakistan. The militant commander identified the three as Abu Rashid from Saudi Arabia, Muhammed Ilyas Kuwaiti from Kuwait and Muhammed Sajid Yamani from Yemen. Unnamed US officials would not confirm or deny the men had died to the Long War Journal.

In July 2014, Newsweek Pakistan interviewed the widow of an Uzbek fighter who purportedly died a year before the story was published in a drone strike in the Shawal area. Khadija Bibi, an Uzbek national, told the magazine her husband “was a skilled warrior who had strong connections with al Qaeda.” She added: “My husband had no relations with the local militants.”

Three days before the strike anonymous US officials told the Associated Press the US was scaling back drone strikes in the tribal regions and only targeting high-profile militants in a bid to appease the Pakistani army. The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack, saying “such strikes also set dangerous precedents in the inter-state relations” in a statement, adding: “These drone strikes have a negative impact on the mutual desire of both countries to forge a cordial and cooperative relationship and to ensure peace and stability in the region.”