'US drone downed'in lawless tribal area

AN aircraft which came down in Pakistan's lawless tribal area near the Afghan border yesterday was suspected to be an unmanned United States drone.

Intelligence officials said the crash happened in the Hamdhoni area of North Waziristan, some 2.5 miles north-west of the main town of Miran Shah.

Local resident Saudur Rehman said he heard gunfire just before he saw the drone crash and local tribesmen were congratulating each other for shooting it down.

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A similar crash occurred in September 2008, but the Pakistani army denied claims by intelligence officials that troops and local people shot down the aircraft. The army said it was a technical problem.

The US has increasingly relied on the use of drones to kill Taliban and al Qaida militants.

North Waziristan is dominated by militant groups that stage cross-border attacks against US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. One of those groups, the Haqqani network, an al Qaida-linked Afghan Taliban faction, is believed to have helped to orchestrate the December 30 suicide bombing at a remote base in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees.

In roughly three weeks following the attack, suspected US drones carried out 12 missile strikes in North and South Waziristan.

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The strikes are part of a broader trend of President Barack Obama's strategy of relying more heavily than his predecessor on the unmanned aircraft to kill militants in Pakistan.

The militants have responded with a wave of killings targeting people they suspect of helping to facilitate the drone strikes, including six Pakistani men whose bodies were found in two different areas of North Waziristan last Monday.

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