From 'Associated Press': ISLAMABAD — A suspected American missile strike bombarded a village deep inside Pakistani territory Wednesday, officials said, marking what appears to be the first time the U.S. has struck beyond the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. Six alleged militants were killed. Two missiles destroyed a house in Indi Khel village in Bannu district, Javed Marwat, a local government official, told The Associated Press. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said their agents reported that militants from Central Asia were among the six killed.
Site of missile strike: Indi Khel, Pakistan - Nov 19
The United States, which says Taliban and al-Qaida militants use pockets of northwest Pakistan to plan attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan, has been blamed in about 20 cross-border missile strikes since August. The U.S. rarely confirms or denies the strikes, which are believed to be carried out mainly by the CIA. The attacks have killed scores of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the tribal regions that are a rumored hiding place of Osama bin Laden. The missiles are apparently fired from unmanned planes launched in Afghanistan, where some 32,000 U.S. troops are fighting the Taliban and other militants.
Pakistan has protested the strikes as violations of its sovereignty and international law but the attacks continue, leading analysts to speculate that the two nations may have a secret deal. General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, has defended the missile strikes, saying at least three top extremist leaders, whom he did not identify, have been killed in recent months in the attacks. Until Wednesday, all the attacks since August were in North and South Waziristan, two tribal regions where the government has ceded much of its limited control to militants. U.S. officials say they want to help Pakistan regain sovereignty over such areas.
The Bannu district, which falls under the control of the regional government, begins roughly 18 miles away from the border with Afghanistan. Two other intelligence officials, both based in Bannu, said militants had begun moving farther away from the border, including to their district and other settled areas, in an apparent bid to avoid the missile strikes. All the intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to news media.
Even as the U.S. strikes have picked up, American officers in Afghanistan have stressed improved day-to-day Pakistani cooperation in squeezing militants nested along both sides of the lengthy, porous border. U.S. military officials said troops in Afghanistan coordinated with Pakistan on Sunday in shelling insurgents inside Pakistan who were launching rockets at the foreign troops. Pakistan's official statement on the matter referred only to militant activity in Afghanistan.
In the past month, NATO and Pakistan also have cooperated in so-called Operation Lion Heart — a series of complementary operations that involve Pakistani army and paramilitary troops, and NATO on the Afghan side, said Colonel John Spiszer, U.S. commander in northeast Afghanistan. "What we have done is worked very hard to refocus our ... intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets to do everything we can to identify transiting across the border," he told a Pentagon news conference in Washington via teleconference from Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Commanders hope pressure on both sides of the border will eventually mean militants will be "running out of options on places to go," Spiszer said. U.S. officials have praised Pakistani military offensives against militants in its border region, including an operation in the Bajur tribal area that the army says has killed some 1,500 alleged insurgents.
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