Al-Qaeda set up anti-drone cells, reveal secret U.S. documents.

Al-Qaeda set up anti-drone cells, reveal 

secret U.S. documents.

A banner protesting U.S. drone attacks on Yemen earlier this year. (AFP)

Al Arabia  | AFP | 04 Sep 2013 :: Al-Qaeda’s leaders have been bolstering their anti-drone efforts, setting up cells of engineers to shoot down, disable or hijack U.S. drones, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday classified documents.

The militant leadership is “hoping to exploit the technological vulnerabilities of a weapons system that has inflicted huge losses against the terrorist network,” the Post said online.

“Although there is no evidence that Al-Qaeda has forced a drone crash or successfully interfered with flight operations, U.S. intelligence officials have closely tracked the group’s persistent efforts to develop a counterdrone strategy since 2010,” the report said, citing the secret documents.

The newspaper also reported that al-Qaeda commanders are keen to achieve “a technological breakthrough (that) could curb the U.S. drone campaign, which has killed an estimated 3,000 people over the past decade.”

Drone strikes have forced al-Qaeda operatives to limit their movements in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and other places.(Courtesy:Al Arabia)

Nine militants killed in US drone, Pakistan air force strikes.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan | 14 Jul 2013 ::  At least nine suspected militants, including two foreigners, were killed in Pakistan's lawless tribal region in a U.S. drone strike and a separate Pakistan military operation, security officials said on Sunday.

Pakistan has seen a spate of militant attacks since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office last month, putting pressure on his team to act more aggressively to curb the insurgency.

Missile strikes by unmanned U.S. aircraft have inflicted the most damage against Taliban fighters in the mountainous areas straddling the Afghan border in past years, sometimes with heavy civilian casualties.

In the third such attack since Sharif came to power, two suspected militants riding a motorcycle were struck by missiles in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan on Saturday night, one official said.

"The two men, probably Arab nationals, were passing through Mosaki village when the drone fired two missiles and hit them," said the official.

Their identities were not clear. Another security source said they were foreign militants of Turkmen origin.

It is difficult to check the impact of drone attacks on both militants and civilians because independent observers and journalists have almost no access to the areas where most of the strikes occur.

The government, while condemning drone attacks as a violation of its sovereignty, wants to appear decisive in its own efforts to combat militants on its soil and has vowed to map out a new security strategy to tackle the insurgency.

In a separate operation by the Pakistan Air Force, jets pounded several militant hideouts overnight, killing seven insurgents, senior security officials said.

"These areas are known as strongholds of the militants from where they stage deadly attacks in Kohat and Peshawar," one official in Kohat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani military officials believe mountains linking the Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram tribal areas are one of the main strongholds for the Taliban-linked militants in Pakistan.

Another senior military official in the northwestern frontier city of Peshawar confirmed that air strikes had taken place "somewhere between Orakzai and Khyber".

"We could hear the sounds of fighter jets and see flames when bombs were dropped in the mountains," Shafqat Hussain, a local resident in Kohat, said of the overnight operation.

Many Taliban and their al Qaeda allies fled Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas after the U.S. invasion in 2001. They retreated even deeper into the mountains following a Pakistan army offensive in 2009, launching attacks from places where ground forces cannot reach them.(Courtesy:Reuters)

Pakistan families of victims demand halt to US drone strikes.

AFP

Pakistani tribesman Mohammad 

Nazir, the victim of a US drone 

attack, speaks to AFP in Islamabad

 on June 6, 2013. – AFP Photo

ISLAMABAD|06|June|2013:: The families of Pakistani victims of US drone strikes Thursday wrote to new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urging him to stop the campaign – by shooting the unmanned aircraft down if necessary.

The high court in the northwestern city of Peshawar on May 9 declared the CIA drone strikes targeting suspected Taliban and al Qaeda militants to be a “war crime” and ordered Islamabad to take steps to halt them.

Victims' families and their lawyer Mirza Shahzad Akbar have written to Sharif urging him to heed the court's ruling, which calls on the government to take the matter up at the UN Security Council.

Islamabad regularly issues statements condemning the missile strikes as a violation of sovereignty, but has yet to take any stronger action publicly to pressure Washington to end the campaign, which began in 2004.

“The court has ordered the government of Pakistan and its security forces to administer a proper warning to the United States that future drone strikes will not be tolerated,” Akbar wrote in the letter, seen by AFP (Courtesy:Dawn) Read More>>>