US-Nato strikes in Shawal also injured six soldiers

US-Nato strikes in Shawal also injured six soldiers

By our correspondent

PESHAWAR: Six Army soldiers were among the 15 persons who sustained injuries in the bombing and shelling by US-led coalition forces in Shawal valley in North Waziristan last Saturday.This fact wasn’t known or reported until now. But official sources in North Waziristan told The News on Monday that bombs and artillery shells fired from Afghanistan’s territory also hit a joint Pakistan Army and paramilitary Frontier Corps post near the border in Shawal valley. The post was damaged and six soldiers deployed there were injured.Requesting anonymity, a government official said the six wounded soldiers and nine civilians injured in the bombing by US-led coalition warplanes and artillery and mortar shelling were evacuated to Bannu in helicopter and admitted to a military hospital there. Some of the injured were stated to be in critical condition.The cross-border raid by US and Nato forces in the Mana and Mangratay areas of Shawal valley killed about a dozen people, including women and children. Also last Saturday, US-manufactured jet-fighters and Apache helicopters attacked the Tor Jawar village near the border town of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan and killed 21 people, all villagers and including women and children. Almost 40 people were injured in the attack. The Pakistan government ignored the violation of its borders twice that day and didn’t even acknowledge that a Pakistani village had been bombed by US-led coalition aircraft and 21 to 25 people had been killed.

US forces attack Pakistan with jets/helicopters/artillery

Man lost nine members of family in Nato strike; kills himself
By Our Correspondent
WANA, June 24: An elderly man has committed suicide following the death of nine members of his family in the recent Nato bombing in the Mandi Zawar area of the mountainous Shawal region near the Afghan border, local people said.Pikhawar Khan, 70, of the Gangikhel tribe committed suicide when he saw the bodies of nine members of his family, including three women and four children, a journalist of the area associated with a foreign television network told this correspondent during a visit to the area.Quoting local people, he said only one child of Mr Khan’s family survived the bombing by helicopter gunships and aircraft.“First, light-emitting balls were fired which lit up the area. Then machinegun rounds and artillery shells were fired from planes and helicopters, which shook the entire area,” witnesses said. They said a small restaurant was hit by rockets, injuring 11 people.The helicopters fired on the makeshift house of Pikhawar Khan, killing his nine family members.The forest-covered Shawal area is pressed into North and South Waziristan agencies. Many families had shifted to the area for cutting timber after local tribes lifted the ban on forest harvesting.Residents said that after bombing the Zawar area, the helicopters and jets started pounding the nearby Rakha area along the Afghan border in the South Waziristan Agency. Nato and US-led forces started intense shelling on houses in Rakha in which 20 people were killed and scores of others injured.Two of the injured were taken to a hospital in Wana. In the Rakha area, eight houses were hit by rockets and heavy gunfire. Reports say people have started evacuating Mandi Zawar in the North Waziristan Agency as tension has gripped the area.

US ’copters violate Pak airspace

US ’copters violate Pak airspace
Updated at
-->By Mushtaq YusufzaiPESHAWAR: US helicopter gunships violated Pakistan’s air space for the second time in less than a week by intruding at least five kilometres inside the restive North Waziristan tribal agency on Wednesday, residents and officials told The News.Two helicopter gunships crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the Lowara Mandi town of North Waziristan. “Both the choppers came at around 9:45 a.m. and returned to Afghanistan after flying over the town for 15 minutes,” an eyewitness told this scribe by telephone from the area. He said it created panic among the residents of the Pakistani border town. Sources said the Pakistani security forces deployed in the area did not retaliate. According to local tribesmen, it was the second time that the US military violated Pakistan’s air space. “Two American B-52 aircraft entered the same town at around 3:15 a.m. in the wee hours of Sunday, and flew over the town for five minutes,” a resident said.When approached, Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad said he did not have any information of air space violation but argued that sometime when operation against the Taliban is going on inside Afghanistan close to the Pakistani border the coalition forces mistakenly enter our territory.“Since the border is not well-defined there and then the area is mountainous, therefore, they sometime cross the border but it has never been a deliberate attempt,” said Maj-Gen Waheed.