US strike kills 'German militants'

FIVE German militants are believed to have been killed in an American missile strike close to the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The officials said the missiles hit a house in the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan region.

Two said the victims were believed to be German citizens in the region for terrorist training. A third said they were believed to be foreigners, but gave no details.

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Killing so many Western militants in a single strike would be unusual.

US officials rarely confirm the identities of those who are being targeted by the CIA-led missile campaign.

Dozens of Muslim militants with European citizenship are believed to be hiding out in lawless north-west Pakistan, training for missions that could include terror attacks in European capitals.

A spokeswoman for Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office said last week that there was "concrete evidence" that 70 people had travelled from Germany to Pakistan and Afghanistan for paramilitary training, and that about a third of them had returned to Germany.

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A senior official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) said that there were believed to be "several dozen" people with European citizenship – many of Pakistani origin – among the Islamic extremists operating in the lawless tribal border area.

Al-Qaida would probably turn to such extremists for a European plot because they can move freely in and out of Western cities.

Fear that such an attack is in the planning stage prompted the US State Department to advise Americans travelling in Europe to be vigilant. American and European security experts have been concerned that terrorists based in Pakistan may be plotting attacks in Europe with assault weapons, similar to the deadly 2008 shooting spree in Mumbai, India.

US intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden is behind the plots. Japan has become the latest country to warn about the terror threat in Europe.

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Earlier yesterday, French police arrested a 53-year-old man suspected of links to bomb threats including one on Friday at a Paris railway hub, an official with knowledge of the investigation said. The suspect, who was not identified, was detained south-west of the capital for possible links to a phone-in threat at the Saint-Lazare train station.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility yesterday for a pre-dawn attack on tankers carrying fuel to Afghanistan for US and other Nato forces.

The tankers were left vulnerable on the side of the road after Pakistan shut down a key border crossing.

About a dozen militants peppered the vehicles with automatic gunfire at a truck stop on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad. Some 20 trucks went up in flames and four people were killed and seven injured, authorities said.

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Hours later, gunmen attacked and burned two other trucks carrying Nato supplies in south-west Pakistan, killing the driver.

There have been four such attacks since Pakistan closed its main border crossing into Afghanistan to Nato supply convoys last Thursday.

The closure was an apparent reaction to a series of alleged Nato incursions, including a helicopter attack that killed three Pakistani soldiers. Traffic has since been backing up at various points along the route from the southern port city of Karachi to the crossing at Torkham –where scores of trucks remain stranded and vulnerable to attack in the volatile Khyber Pass.

Although Pakistan says the Torkham blockade will soon be lifted, the latest attack and the Taliban threat seemed certain to raise the stakes in the closure, which has exacerbated tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

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