Suspected U.S. drone aircraft kills at least 7 militants in Pakistan

PanARMENIAN.Net - A suspected U.S. drone aircraft killed at least seven militants in Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border on Friday, Sept 6, Pakistani security officials and residents said, according to Reuters.

U.S. drones have fired missiles into troubled and inaccessible border areas such as North Waziristan, the main stronghold for militant groups aligned with al Qaeda and the Taliban, since 2004.

Pakistan has been angered by reports of civilian casualties and what it sees as a violation of its sovereignty, and the United States has reduced their use in recent years.

In the early hours of Friday, drones fired two missiles on a compound in the village of Dargah Mandi in North Waziristan, destroying the house and killing seven people.

Security officials said all those who were killed were insurgents. The area where the attack took place is known as a stronghold for the Haqqani network, which regularly attacks U.S. forces in Afghanistan from its mountain hideouts in Pakistan.

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have fallen significantly over the past two and a half years, totaling 20 this year. There were 48 in all of 2012 and 73 in 2011, according to a tally kept by the New America Foundation.

It is hard to check their impact on both militants and civilians because independent observers and journalists have almost no access to the areas where most of the strikes occur.

The United States government has made hundreds of attacks on targets in northwest Pakistan since 2004, using drones. Most of these attacks are on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in Northwest Pakistan. These strikes were begun by President George W. Bush and have increased substantially under President Barack Obama. Until very recently, the U.S. had officially denied the extent of its policy; in May 2013 it acknowledged for the first time that U.S. citizens had been killed in the strikes. Surveys have shown that the strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan.