US drone strike kills four Pakistani militants
http://bit.ly/yWt6Fj
A missile from an unmanned US plane has killed at least four Islamic militants in Pakistan in the first drone strike since November. Shortly before Wednesday midnight, the missiles hit an insurgent compound in North Waziristan, on the Afghan border. The area is known as an Al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold. In recent years, the US has been increasingly using drone attacks to combat insurgents in Pakistan's mainly lawless Pashtun tribal areas in the west and northwest, considered to be fueling violence across the Afghan border. The Obama administration promises that drone strikes have significantly weakened the Al-Qaeda. The new strike comes two months after an American air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, incorporating to the already tense relationship between Washington and Islamabad. The White House said the November strike was an error, but Pakistan rejected the findings, saying the strike was deliberate. In response, Pakistan closed off NATO offer routes into Afghanistan and demanded that US troops leave its remote air base located in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province. The Wednesday strike could have been performed with the complicit or implicit involvement of the Pakistani government, believes Chris Woods, a senior reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at Metropolis University in London. “The US and Pakistan have been discussing behind the scenes the Pakistan’s restraint policies for some weeks now,” Woods advised RT. “So it is inconceivable that those drones were working in Waziristan without the approval of the Pakistani government.” On the other hand, Pakistan proceeds turning a deaf ear to such drone bombings because of to immense funding from the US, Woods extra. “The US has a very deep financial relationship with Pakistan, and particularly with Pakistan’s military,” Woods said. “Billions of dollars a year are being put in on Pakistan’s military by the US for almost a ten years. That money is important for Pakistan. The problem arises when civilians get killed – that happens fairly frequently – or other military organizations Pakistan is helpful with occur under strike. That places Pakistan in quite an awkward position towards military organizations within its own borders.”