Pakistan official: US strike killed foreign militants

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Last Friday’s U.S. airstrike on a
Pakistani border village, which U.S. officials said was aimed
at al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri, killed at least
four foreign militants, a senior provincial official said on
Tuesday.

Eighteen local people were killed in the attack, as well as
the foreign militants, and Pakistan has lodged a protest with
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker over the attack and loss of life.

Pakistani officials say Zawahri was not present in Damadola
village early on Friday when missiles fired by CIA-operated
drone aircraft struck three houses.

But Fahim Wazir, Political Agent for the semi-autonomous
Bajaur tribal agency, issued a statement saying: “According to
the available information at least four to five foreign
elements had also been killed in the incident.”

The bodies of the militants killed by the missiles were
taken away by their comrades “to suppress the actual reason for
the attack,” he said in the statement released in Peshawar, the
capital of North West Frontier Province.

At least 10 to 12 foreign militants had been invited to a
feast in Damadola by two Muslim clerics, Maulana Faqir Mohammad
and Maulana Liaqat, said Wazir, the top federal government
officer in the tribal agency.

The CIA had been hoping Zawahri was among the dead, but
Pakistani intelligence officers say the Egyptian-born deputy to
Osama bin Laden had not turned up for the feast, although he
had been invited.