Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was among six militants killed in a US drone strike on Friday in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
Former President Pervez Musharraf has acknowledged his regime secretly cleared United States drone strikes, becoming the first serving or retired Pakistani official to publicly admit that the country had a deal on attacks by the CIA-operated spy planes.
Indian policymakers must realise that in buying small quantities of equipment, it becomes hard to start manufacturing them in India, explains Ajai Shukla.
The Pakistani military will shoot down any United States drone that intrudes the country's airspace under a new defence policy in which troops have been given greater liberty to respond to incursions by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and allied forces in Afghanistan, according to a media report.
"The current open secret covert-action drone programme in Pakistan, which does nothing except enable the Pakistanis to allow us to do it, unofficially, and then officially to attack us for it and thereby make us extremely unpopular in Pakistan and interferes with all sorts of other objectives with Pakistan, is anomalous," Admiral (rtd) Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, told reporters during a conference call organised by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Iranian missiles and drones on Tuesday night targeted two bases of the Balochi militant group Jaish al Adl in Pakistan's border town of Panjgur in Balochistan province.
Easy availability of drones has increased the complexity of security challenges and the Indian military is developing capabilities to effectively deal with the threats, be it from State-sponsored elements or by states themselves, Army Chief Gen M M Naravane said on Thursday.
Kurulkar and 'Zara Dasgupta' were in contact through WhatsApp as well as voice and video calls, the chargesheet said.
US drones targetting terrorist camps in Pakistan's tribal belt have fallen silent for the last one month, since the Mohmand incident in which NATO strikes on two checkposts killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. But the pause is likely to be temporary, reports Amir Mir
The TTP, however, did not confirm the death of its chief in the drone strike.
Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs said that the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is "completely unacceptable" and warned of serious consequences.
Pakistan has once again requested the United States to provide it with drone technology, so that it can carry out operations against the Taliban and other extremist groups in the lawless tribal region along the Afghan border.
A Pakistani teenager, who recently joined a protest rally against US drone strikes, was killed in an attack by the CIA-operated spy planes in North Waziristan tribal region, a campaigner against the missile strikes said on Tuesday.
Officials said Umar Mansour, alias Umar Naray, had been killed in the US drone attack in the Bandar area of Afghanistan's Nangarhar province on Saturday.
He said 100 youths joined terrorism in J-K this year, which is also the lowest in many years.
Indicating a tacit understanding between Islamabad and Washington over drone strikes, a United States scholar has said the Pakistan government has now publicly asked the US administration to stop drone strikes, but has not taken any measure against it. In fact, the Pakistani government continues to clear the air space whenever the United States asks them to do so for their drone strikes.
In a calibrated operation, the Indian Navy on Saturday 'coerced' 35 Pirates onboard a merchant ship around 1,400 nautical miles from the Indian coast to surrender and ensured the safe evacuation of 17 crew members without any injury, officials said.
After a temporary respite, in the unceasing suicide attcks on the Pakistani establishment, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan plans to wreak havoc across the country with a fresh series of attacks , targetting the main leadership of the country, Qari Hussain, Pakistani Taliban commander said.
On Monday, five Army personnel were killed and five injured when heavily armed terrorists hurled a grenade and opened indiscriminate fire on two army vehicles around 3.30 pm on the Machedi-Kindli-Malhar mountainous road near Badnota village, about 150 km from the district headquarters Kathua.
Notwithstanding its public denouncements against US' "unilateral" drone attacks, Pakistan approved the controversial strikes by the CIA for years under a secret deal with America, a damning media report said on Thursday.
Pakistan on Thursday said US drone attacks in its tribal belt had become a "core irritant" in bilateral relations and top Pakistani leaders have clearly conveyed this position to their American counterparts. "Drone attacks have become a core irritant in the counter-terrorism campaign," Foreign office spokesperson Tehmina Janjua told a weekly news briefing.
Islamabad also summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires here and issued a strongly worded condemnation of Iran's "violation of its airspace", the Foreign Office said.
There is "strong evidence" that top members of Pakistan's military, government and intelligence service gave their "active consent and approval" to CIA drone strikes in the country's lawless tribal areas between June 2004 and June 2008, according to a UN report.
The foreign ministry's statement came amidst the reported visit of Foreign Minister Sun Weidong to Pakistan on a mediation mission.
Annoyed over the case of its arrested national Raymond Davis, the United States has once again resumed drone strikes in the tribal belt of Pakistan.
Badruddin Haqqani, the key operational commander of the Al Qaeda linked Haqqani network, and top Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are believed to have been killed in US drone and air strikes in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A senior leader of the Haqqani network, blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Afghanistan, was among the three militants killed in a United States drone strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region. Jalil Haqqani, a close relative of Haqqani network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, was among those killed, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The drone fired two missiles at a compound in a village north of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan Agency.
Pakistan on Saturday accused the US of deliberately trying to sabotage its peace process with militants by carrying out the drone attack that killed Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, saying it would review the entire gamut of bilateral ties and cooperation.
A Pakistani court on Wednesday issued a notice to former President Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf for allowing US drone attacks in country even as a fresh strike by the Central Intelligence Agency-operated spy plane killed at least five in the restive North Waziristan.
United States drones struck in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region for the third consecutive day on Thursday, killing seven suspected terrorists, officials said.
In a secret deal, Pakistan allowed American drone strikes on its soil on the condition that the unmanned aircraft would stay away from its nuclear facilities and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India, according to a media report.
US drone attacks in Pakistani territory are undermining the war on terror, President Asif Ali Zardari told an American Congressional delegation on Thursday, asking Washington to provide the drone technology to his country's armed forces.
The agency also recovered an electronic circuit used in making explosives from the rented flat of the terror suspects in Pune's Kondhwa area along with 500 GB data from the devices, he said.
The Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent says a series of drone attacks have killed nearly 50 of its members, including deputy head Ustad Ahmad Farooq and Qari Imran, the group's central council member and in charge of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The development comes amidst officials of the foreign ministries from the two sides exchanged goodwill messages.
Zafar, who was linked to Al-Qaida, was wanted by the US in connection with a March 2006 suicide attack on the US consulate in Karachi that killed an American diplomat and three Pakistanis.
There was no official word on the development. Pakistani authorities rarely confirm US drone attacks or provide details of casualties.
American drones carried out one of their deadliest strikes in Pakistan's troubled northwest firing 18 missiles to hit multiple Taliban targets, including terrorist training camps, hideouts and vehicles killing 15 militants.
United States Senator Carl Levin, the influential and much respected chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, has blasted the Pakistani government for its hypocrisy in privately condoning the US predator drone attacks to eliminate the terrorists in meetings with American officials, and then publicly condemning them as a violation of that country's sovereignty.He argued that these public protestations were a bigger problem.
A Pakistani court on Thursday declared that US drone strikes in the country's lawless tribal belt were illegal and directed the Foreign Ministry to move a resolution against the attacks in the United Nations.
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