(Previous Incident Code: Ob52 )

In the first drone strike since the devastating TTP-Al Qaeda attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan on December 30, North Waziristan’s Taliban commander Haji Omar Khan was reported killed along with up to six others, some of them civilians.  Journalist Karim Khan, claimed at the time by one source to be ‘close to militants’ was the owner of the house. His 17-year old son Zaenullah Khan, a part-time security guard at a school, his brother Asif Iqbal, a teacher, and a local stonemason Khaliq Dad all died.

In December 2010 Pakistani barrister Mirza Shahzad Akbar filed an application with Islamabad’s Secretariat Police Station to register a First Information Report against Jonathan Banks, then-Station Chief of the CIA in Islamabad, for his alleged involvement in the deaths. The outing of Banks led to his having to leave Pakistan. In a case placed before the UN Human Rights Council by Akbar in February 2012 it was stated:

On December 31, 2009, at approximately 9pm, [Karim Khan’s] family house was attacked with missiles fired from a drone. Three people inside the house were killed, and severely damaged Khan’s house. The three killed were Asif Iqbal, the complainant’s brother and a secondary school teacher at a local public school; Zahin Ullah Khan, the complainant’s son, a government employee working at the Government Girls Public School Mira Khan Kot; and Khaliq Dad, a mason who was working on construction of the village mosque, and was staying with Khan’s family in the house. None of the victims were involved in any terrorist activity or with any terrorist organizations.

In October 2012 the British Daily Mail featured a lengthy interview with Khan in which he discussed the aftermath of the attack. Describing how he had received a 2am call informing him of the attack, Khan described how ‘I called a friend who had a car and we started driving through the night to get back to the village. It was a terrible journey. I was shocked,  grieving, angry, like anyone who had lost their loved ones. He says that he reached the village soon after dawn, saying that it was ‘like entering a village of the dead – it was so quiet.  There was a crowd gathered outside the compound but nowhere for them to sit because the guest rooms had been destroyed’. His son ‘had been killed instantly, but despite his horrific injuries, [Khan’s brother] Asif had survived long enough to be taken to a nearby hospital. However, he died during the night,’ the paper reported. More than 1,000 people attended the funerals that day, Khan said.

In late 2013 Khan spoke to Foreign Affairs. By then reportedly a journalist with Al Jazeera Arabic, he described living in his village under orbiting drones: ‘For us, [it] is as though we are living at the mercy and generosity of the Americans. There is no force that can stop them or topple them.’