Two US drone strikes kill 14 militants in Northwest

PESHAWAR: A pair of American drone strikes killed 14 suspected militants in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, local intelligence officials said, in the latest attacks against al-Qaida and Taliban militants seeking sanctuary in the region.
The missiles struck an hour apart in the North Waziristan – the area that has seen the overwhelming majority of drone strikes over the last two months. The rugged region is home to hundreds of Pakistani and foreign militants, many belonging to or allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In the first strike, one American missile slammed into a house and another hit a vehicle in the town of Ghulam Khan just north of Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, the two officials said. Nine insurgents were killed.
An hour later, another pair of missiles struck a vehicle in the nearby town of Datta Khel, killing five suspected militants, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media. They said all five killed were foreigners.
Further details were not immediately available. The intelligence officials said agents on the ground were collecting more details.
North Waziristan, which is part of the Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt, is home to the Haqqani network, a powerful insurgent group that US officials say is behind many of the attacks on US and Nato forces just across the border in Afghanistan. The group is believed to control the town hit by the first strike Sunday.
The region is too dangerous for outsiders to visit and independently confirm the attacks, and US officials do not acknowledge firing the missiles, much less discuss who they are targeting.
It is widely believed, however, that Pakistan’s army has given tacit approval to the strikes and the recent spike in attacks has not attracted a greater level of criticism.
Washington wants Islamabad to launch a military offensive in the region, but so far has had to rely on missile strikes to hamper militant operations. The pace of the attacks has picked up recently, with roughly 20 apiece in the past two months, double the preceding monthly tally.
Some locals allege that the suspected US drone strikes regularly kill innocents, while others say the missiles are accurate and most of the dead are militants or villagers knowingly harboring them.
The strikes are carried out by unmanned drones that fly over the region for hours and equipped with extremely high-powered video cameras. — AP

The Socialite Network: UK’s Queen joins Facebook

LONDON: Now it’s the socialite network – Britains Queen Elizabeth II has joined Facebook, launching a series of official pages offering the website’s 500 million users daily updates on her engagements, the royal household said Sunday.
The 84-year-old British monarch will be featured in videos, photos and news items on the site, which will be available from Monday, alongside other members of the country’s royal family, including Princes William and Harry.
Users will be able leave messages or comments for Buckingham Palace on the site and find details of royal events close to their homes.
However, because the pages will be corporate – and not a personal account – people won’t be able to request to become friends with the queen.
A royal official said the queen had personally approved the plan, but acknowledged she has not actually used the site herself.
“The decision went right up to the queen,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the plan ahead of its official launch. “If you are going to have an online presence in 2010, you just have to be on Facebook.”
The Facebook page is the queen’s latest social media venture – the royal family already have an account on the Flickr photography website, joined Twitter in 2009 and set up a video channel on YouTube in 2007.
Buckingham Palace set up its own website in 1997, which now allows people to apply for palace jobs online, track the royal family via Google Maps or read details in a section devoted to the queen’s prized corgi dogs.
Her Facebook site will include Britain’s court circular, the official daily record of the royal family’s engagements. It lists all royal diary appointments from the previous day and was created by George III in 1803, reportedly after he became frustrated at inaccurate newspaper reports. — AP

Foreign military deaths in Afghanistan in 2010 hit 626

KABUL: The deaths of three Nato soldiers – two on Sunday – in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban-led insurgency have taken the toll for this year to 626.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldiers, whose nationalities were not revealed, died following insurgent attacks in eastern Afghanistan.
One of the soldiers died on Saturday and two died on Sunday, ISAF said in separate statements.
The AFP toll is based on a tally kept by the independent icasualties.org website. The total number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the war began in late 2001 is 2,196.
Last year, 521 foreign troops died in the war.
Nato and the United States have more than 150,000 troops in the country fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.
The insurgency is concentrated in the southern provinces of Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand, regarded by the Taliban as their territory and where most of the world’s opium is produced.
The Helmand governor’s office said that an improvised explosive device – the IEDs that have become the hallmark of Taliban violence – killed five civilians on Sunday morning.
The device exploded when a car in which 11 people were travelling near the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah hit it, the office said in a statement, and four children were wounded in the blast.
The United Nations said in a report early this year that most Afghan civilian casualties are caused by the Taliban. The perception among ordinary Afghans however is that the foreign military presence is behind the violence.
The Taliban have expanded their tactics in recent months to include political assassinations, which have been heavily felt in Kandahar, where the movement was formed.
The latest victim was a senior officer at Kandahar jail, who was gunned down by assailants on motorbikes while out shopping, the spokesman for the provincial administration, Zalmay Ayoubi, said.
On November 4, the deputy head of the provincial adult literacy department was killed by unidentified gunmen, police said.The wave of killings of government employees has made it almost impossible to fill civil service posts, creating a chasm in governance in Kandahar, residents have said.
One of the pivots of the counter-insurgency campaign currently underway in and around the city is following clearing operations – which push out the insurgents – with the establishment of civil services.
The bodies of five police officers who were seized last week by the Taliban in an attack on a remote district in Ghazni province have been found, an official said.
A spokesman for the governor of neighbouring Wardak province, Adam Khan Sirat, said the bodies had been found by security forces early Sunday.
The dead police officers were among a total of 19 who were kidnapped after insurgents stormed Khogyani district late last Sunday, seizing the local administration.
One was released and four were killed earlier, officials said. Nine were still unaccounted for.
Provincial governor Musa Khan Akbarzada said on Monday that the district had been retaken after a long and tough fight. — AFP

Obama pushes India to talk to Pakistan

MUMBAI: President Barack Obama called on India on Sunday to bolster peace efforts with Pakistan, a country that he said was not acting quickly enough to deal with militancy within its borders.
Obama faces a diplomatic tightrope in fostering ties with India as its economic and geopolitical importance grows while at the same time helping Pakistan with billions of dollars in aid and promoting wider peace in Afghanistan.
“My hope is that over time, trust develops between the two countries, that dialogue begins, perhaps on less controversial issues, building up to more controversial issues,” Obama told a meeting of students at a college in Mumbai.
“There are more Pakistanis who’ve been killed by terrorists inside Pakistan than probably anywhere else,” Obama said.
India blames Pakistan for fostering militants and says elements withing the Pakistan state were behind the Mumbai attacks in 2008, when Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people in a 60-hour rampage through India’s financial hub.
The attack inflamed tension between the nuclear foes, who have been to war three times since independence from Britain in 1947. India immediately broke off peace talks with Pakistan, although there have been some largely fruitless top level meetings in the last year.
While Obama’s visit is mainly about boosting trade with India, the issue of regional stability in South Asia dominated a meeting on Sunday that Obama held with students at a college in Mumbai.
On Saturday, Obama announced the United States would relax export controls over sensitive technology, a demand of India’s that will help deepen U.S. ties with the emerging global power and its trillion dollar economy.
The White House also announced Obama would support India’s membership of four global non-proliferation organizations.
Obama is scheduled later on Sunday to fly to New Delhi for a tour of a Mughal-era tomb and dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Obama will also visit Indonesia, South Korea and Japan on an Asian tour that will see Washington push to prevent countries unilaterally devaluing currencies to protect their exports, a top theme at the Group of 20 heads of state meet in Seoul next week.

Ten militants killed in Orakzai air strikes

KALAYA: Ten militants were killed and five others injured when helicopter gunships pounded their hideouts in various areas of Lower Orakzai tribal region on Saturday.

Official sources said that military helicopters targeted militant positions in Andar Mella, Malokhel and Saidkhel villages after nine people, security personnel among them, were kidnapped.

Sources said that those kidnapped were going from Bezotkhel to Kohat on Friday when militants stopped their vehicles in Saidkhel area and forcibly took them away.

Three hideous were destroyed in the shelling.

The political administration called a meeting of the elders of Bezotkhel, Perozkhel and Istrikhel tribes and asked them to take action against militants who were attacking security forces’ convoys and government installations in the area.

The elders were told to inform the security forces about the movement of militants in their areas.

Fear, mourning behind Karachi shutdown

KARACHI: The city was completely shut down on Saturday apparently because of widespread fear blended with mourning as the body of Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Dr Imran Farooq was flown in from London and was later buried in Federal B Area amid a few incidents of arson and shooting.

Though the traders, who had already announced that they would keep major commercial houses and business centres closed on the burial day of Dr Farooq, shops inside thickly populated residential areas also remained shut throughout the day.

Almost the same situation was witnessed on roads where life remained paralysed after a late-night announcement by the transporters’ body to keep the vehicles off the roads.

Life in the city, which started witnessing incidents of firing and arson on Thursday evening, came virtually to a halt with no sign of regular business and social activity across the metropolis. Even beggars were nowhere to be seen, so complete was the shutdown.

“The decision to keep the vehicles off the roads was taken after deliberations with members of our organisation,” said Irshad Bukhari, president of the Karachi Transport Ittehad.

“A few incidents on Thursday evening further discouraged transporters from operating their vehicles and even today (Saturday) we have reports of attacks on public transport in a few areas.”

Mr Bukhari’s findings matched with the data collected by the central fire station that recorded at least three incidents of arson in different parts of the city, where armed men intercepted the vehicles before setting them on fire.

A motorcycle was also set on fire in Khawaja Ajmer Nagri after a brief exchange of fire between workers of two political parties.

Though the area police claimed to have controlled the situation, the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital received two injured from the affected part that included an MQM worker identified as Imran, said to be in his early 20s.

“In Pak Colony, a rickshaw was set on fire and in Saeedabad a minibus (JE-9285) met the same fate,” said an official at the central fire station.

In North Nazimabad two young men associated with the MQM received bullet wounds in firing, but people behind the incident remained untraced. Though the victims blamed the Rangers for the firing, the police said they were still investigating the incident.

“Two MQM workers — Shahzad and Imran, in his mid-30s and residents of Orangi Town — received a single bullet wound each in firing near the Five-Star traffic intersection, within the remit of the Shahrah-i-Noor Jehan police station,” said SP Malik Zafar Iqbal of North Nazimabad Town.

“They accused the Rangers of firing, but we didn’t have any such reports. Initial findings suggested that the two youngsters collided with a bus that led to an exchange of hot words and then firing from an unknown side. Both have been shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for treatment.”

Major business centres and markets remained closed following the announcement made by the traders’ association a couple of days ago. They referred to their decision both as a sign of mourning and security measures.

“We even kept the businesses closed on the very next day when Dr Farooq was murdered in London,” said Siddiq Memon of the Karachi Traders Action Committee.

“Security has always been an issue in this city for the traders and we prefer protection of life and property of our members to business.”

However, he said, the traders were likely to operate on Sunday to make up for the losses to some extent and meet business commitments which could not materialise on Saturday.

Pakistan beat India in HK Sixes

HONG KONG: Pakistan, led by Shoaib Malik, on Saturday swept to a 22-run victory over arch-rivals India in preliminary round match on opening day of US$150,000 Hong Kong Cricket Sixes tournament.

Pakistan grabbed early high ground after rain forced organisers into making huge changes to the format of popular tournament at the Kowloon Cricket Club on Saturday which saw more than three-quarters of the programme cancelled due to rain.

“It’s always good to start with a win,” said Pakistan skipper Malik. “For a first game, it was a good performance from the guys and I’m pretty pleased.”

Poor weather resulted in a switch to four overs per innings from five and with organisers keeping options open if winners of each group meet in Cup final on Sunday or if top two teams move into a cross-over semi-finals.

All eight teams got a run on first day with Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and South Africa joining Pakistan as winners.

Sri Lanka knocked off 77 runs needed for victory over New Zealand.

Hosts Hong Kong hammered England. Chasing 61, Hong Kong romped home to five-wicket win.

South Africa chased down Australia’s 73-run total for loss of three wickets, scrambling through for a single on final ball of match to earn win.

“If rain stays away, we will play remaining eight pool games on Sunday, with top two going into Cup semi- finals. But if there are any more interruptions, we have to go straight into Cup final with winners of each pool progressing,” said tournament director Adam Davies.—Agencies