Mohammad Awan

At least 25 people have been killed in a US drone strike in the troubled Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, officials told the BBC.

Missiles were fired on a large compound in the town of Spinwam, but five women and four children in a nearby house were also killed.

The area is a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Meanwhile, at least 13 soldiers died when hundreds of insurgents attacked a checkpoint near the Afghan border.

Pakistani security officials told the BBC that Afghan militants had crossed the border and stormed the army post in the Lower Dir area.

Security forces temporarily abandoned the post but now, residents say, they are back in control and have placed the entire area under curfew.

Pakistani-US tensions

Pakistani officials say four missiles were fired on a large compound occupied by supporters of local militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, in Spinwam, 40km (25 miles) north-east of the tribal region’s main town of Miranshah.

Several people were also wounded in Friday’s attack, a local intelligence official was quoted as telling AFP news agency.

The US does not routinely confirm it conducts drone operations in Pakistan.

But analysts say only American forces have the capacity to deploy such aircraft. US drone attacks have escalated in the region since President Barack Obama took office. More than 100 raids were reported last year.

Many militants, some of them senior, have been killed in the raids, but hundreds of civilians have also died.

Drone strikes are are hugely unpopular with the Pakistani public. Correspondents say they have the tacit approval of the authorities, although Pakistani leaders deny secretly supporting them.

The BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says there have been few drone attacks in Spinwam, making it a comparatively safe place for militants who have been chased out of other militant strongholds in North Waziristan.

A drone strike in North Waziristan on 17 March killed some 40 people, most of them believed to be civilians attending a tribal meeting.

In a rare public condemnation, Gen Kayani called that raid “intolerable and unjustified”.

Friday’s strike comes a day after Pakistani army chief, Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, told the US military’s top officer, Adm Mike Mullen, that drone strikes complicated Pakistan’s “national” war against the militants.

It also comes amid a deepening rift between the US and Pakistan. On Wednesday Adm Mullen accused Pakistan’s spy agency of having links with militants targeting troops in Afghanistan.

Anti-American feeling has been on the rise in Pakistan, stoked by the row over CIA contractor Raymond Davis, arrested and later released after shooting dead two Pakistani men in Lahore in January.

Recent reports in the US from unnamed Pakistani officials, suggest Pakistan demanded certain restrictions to the CIA’s activities in Pakistan, including their drone programme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13167425

Rogue U.S.

soldiers snipped the pinky off an Afghan teen they killed for kicks – and later used it to wage a bet while playing spades, a blockbuster expose reports.

That’s one of the shocking stories in a new Rolling Stone magazine expose of an Army “kill team” that targeted innocent Afghan civilians for death.

Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the squad leader and main target of the Army’s ongoing war crimes investigation, allegedly sliced the finger off Gul Mudin – the approximately 15-year-old Afghan that Spc. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes are accused of killing.

“When it came time for their wager, Morlock and Holmes said they would bet a finger,” Mark Boal reported MOnday in the magazine. “Then they tossed the finger that Gibbs had sliced from Mudin’s body on the card pile.”

Seventeen revolting photographs taken by the soldiers – including one of a severed head and another showing a pair of blown off legs – accompany the article by Boal, who won an Oscar for writing “The Hurt Locker” screenplay.

Those awful images were published just days after another batch of gory pictures taken by the soldiers appeared in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

The Pentagon has already condemned the alleged atrocities as “repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army,” and apologized to the Afghan people “for the distress these photos cause.”

Morlock, shown in several pictures holding a dead man’s head by the hair, has already pleaded guilty to murder during his court-martial.

The troubled 22-year-old from Wasilla, Alaska – a pal and hockey teammate of Sarah Palin’s son, Track – is expected to testify against Gibbs, Holmes and other platoon members.

Fearful of handing a propaganda weapon to the Taliban, Boal reports the Army “launched a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.”

Abu Ghraib was the Iraqi prison when U.S. soldiers took pictures of themselves humiliating prisoners.

“By suppressing the photos, however, the Army may also have been trying to keep secret evidence that the killings of civilians went beyond a few men in 3rd Platoon,” Boal reported.

It is a violation of Army standards to take photos of dead.

Boal also reports that the bored soldiers blew their minds by smoking copious amounts of hashish and beat up suspected “snitches” who complained.

In one case, Boal reports that after Gibbs directed the beating of one soldier he “reached into his pocket and took out a bit of cloth.”

“Unfolding it, he tossed two severed fingers on the floor, with bits of skin still hanging off the bone,” Boal reported.

Then Morlock warned the beaten soldier that he would end up like “that guy” if he didn’t “shut the hell up.”

U.S. soldiers’ ‘kill team’ killed Afghanis, used body parts in poker games: report – New York Daily News