Pakistan – praag.org

Unprecedented security at Zim Pakistan clash

Thousands of police and paramilitaries have been deployed and helicopters will be buzzing over Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, which has been turned into a fortress for Friday’s Twenty20 cricket game against lowly Zimbabwe.

Authorities have mounted an unprecedented operation to guard insurgency-hit Pakistan’s first home international in six years.

The fixture is Pakistan’s first on home soil since 2009, when militants launched a gun attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus in Lahore, killing eight police and civilians and leaving seven players wounded.

Roads around the stadium will be closed and shops and restaurants have been shuttered for the duration of the series, consisting of two Twenty20s and three ODIs, all in Lahore.

Jammers are in use to cut out radio signals, hampering wifi at the stadium, and fans will have to go through metal detectors at three security checkpoints, raising the prospect of hours of queuing.

Zimbabwe have been under tight wraps since their arrival early on Tuesday, when they were whisked from the airport to their hotel watched by thousands of security personnel.

They are far from the usual arrangements for a cricket match, and Zimbabwe captain Elton Chigumbura said it was a new experience for him and his team.

Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi hoped the first ball on Friday will refocus attention on cricket as he attempts to lift his team after a poor World Cup and series in Bangladesh.

Despite the tight security and the late confirmation of the series, following a massacre in an attack on a bus in Karachi, organisers say the 27,000-capacity venue is a sell-out for Friday’s game.

Source: AFP

Thousands in Pakistan call for boycott on French products

Around 5,000 people rallied against French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore on Sunday, and the founder of a group banned for militant links urged protesters to boycott French products.

Hafiz Saeed, who founded Lashkar-e-Taiba, an organization banned for launching attacks in neighboring India, told protesters: “We will launch a movement against the insulting caricatures of our beloved prophet.”

French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a picture of the Prophet Muhammad weeping on its cover last week after two gunmen stormed its offices and killed 12 people. The gunmen said their attack was revenge for previous cartoons the magazine had published mocking Islam.

Saeed urged traders to stop importing French products and for Pakistani leaders to try to get an international law against blasphemy passed.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.

On Friday, protesters trying to storm the French consulate in the southern city of Karachi shot and injured a photographer working for French news agency AFP.

Source: Reuters

China launches World Bank rival

China and India are backing a 21 country $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to challenge to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

Memorandum of understanding were signed with 21 Asian countries in Beijing Friday. Australia, Indonesia and South Korea were absent following hidden pressure from Washington.

The development bank was proposed a year ago by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and is to offer financing for infrastructure projects in underdeveloped Asian countries.

Headquartered in Beijing, former chairman of the China International Capital Corp investment bank Jim Liqun, is expected to take a leading role.

The bank will initially be capitalized with $50 billion, most of it contributed by China. The country is planning to increase authorized capital to $100 billion. With that amount the AIIB would be two-thirds the size of the $175 billion Asian Development Bank.

India will be the second largest bank shareholder though Kuwait, Qatar, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Nepal, Oman, and all the countries of the Association of Southeast Asia, except Indonesia are involved.

Australia, Indonesia and South Korea did not participate following US claims of ‘concerns’ about a rival to Western-dominated multilateral lenders.

Japan, China’s main rival in Asia, which dominates the Asian Development Bank along with the United States, did not attend but had not been expected to do so.

Indonesia refused to participate claiming it needs time to discuss China’s proposal.

The Australian Financial Review said US Secretary of State John Kerry had personally asked Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to “steer clear” from joining AIIB.

“Australia has been under pressure from the US for some time to not become a founding member of the bank and it is understood Mr. Kerry put the case directly to the prime minister when the pair met in Jakarta on Monday following the inauguration of Indonesian President Joko Widodo,” the paper said.

South Korea, one of America’s closest allies in Asia, is also prevaricating. Its finance ministry said it spoke with China to request more time to consider details such as the AIIB’s governance and operational principles.

US officials have said they do not want to support an initiative Washington thinks is unlikely to promote good environmental, procurement and human rights standards in the way the World Bank and ADB are required to do.

But Chinese officials are convinced the American opposition is an attempt to contain the global rise of China and its ambition to remain the dominant power in Asia.

“You could think of this as a basketball game in which the US wants to set the duration of the game, the size of the court, the height of the basket and everything else to suit itself,” Wei Jianguo, a former Chinese commerce minister, told the Financial Times.

Matthew Goodman, scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC believes the initiatives of a BRICS Bank and AIIB “represent the first serious institutional challenge to the global economic order.”

Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said the AIIB will set high standards, safeguard policies and improve on bureaucratic, unrealistic and irrelevant policies, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Source: RT

India, Pakistan ties sour as cross-border fire heats up

Indian and Pakistani troops intensified firing across the border over the weekend killing at least four, an Indian official said on Sunday, straining ties between the arch rivals who recently called off top-level diplomatic talks.

Last week India said its foreign secretary would not meet with her Pakistani counterpart as scheduled on Monday because of plans by Pakistan to consult separatists from the border state of Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the meeting.

The cancellation dashed any hopes of near-term peace deliberations, chances of which had risen after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended the inauguration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about three months ago.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan since both countries became independent in 1947. They have fought three wars and came close to a fourth in 2001 and there have been regular clashes on the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Giving ammunition to hawks on both the sides against resuming talks, firing across the border has picked up.

Source: Reuters

Obama comes out against self-determination

By Paul Craig Roberts.

The White House Fool has repeatedly declared erroneously and foolishly that it is “against international law” for Crimea to exercise self-determination. Self-determination, as used by Washington, is a propaganda term that serves Washington’s empire but is not permissible for real people to exercise.

On March 6 Obama telephoned Putin to tell the Russian President again that only Washington has the right to interfere in Ukraine and to insist against all logic that only the “government” in Kiev installed by the Washington-organized coup is “legitimate” and “democratic.”

In other words, the elected government in Crimea pushed by the people in Crimea to give them a vote on their future is “undemocratic” and “illegitimate,” but a non-elected government in Kiev imposed by Washington is the voice of self-determination and legitimacy.

Washington is so arrogant that it never occurs to the hubris-infected fools what the world thinks of Washington’s blatant hypocrisy.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has done nothing but violate international law–Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.

Does Russia have an Africa Command? No, but Washington does.

Is Russia surrounding the US with military bases? No, but Washington has used the NATO organization, whose purpose disappeared 23 years ago, to organize western, eastern, and southern Europe into an empire army with forward bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is determined to extend the boundaries of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Georgia in central Asia and to Ukraine on the Black Sea. Both Georgia and Ukraine are former constituent parts of both Russia and the Soviet Union.

Washington is doing the same thing to China and Iran. Washington is working to establish new air and naval bases in Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, with which to block the flow of oil and other resources into China. Iran is surrounded by some 40 US military bases and has US fleets standing off its coastline.

In Washington’s propaganda, this rank militarism is presented as “defending democracy.”

The Russian government continues to act as though Washington’s thrusts at Russia’s independence and strategic interests can be defused with good sense and good will. But Washington has neither.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has been in the hands of a collection of ideologues who are convinced that the US is “the exceptional indispensable country” with the right to world hegemony. Everything that Washington has done in the 21st century is in pursuit of this goal.

Washington intends to break up the Russian Federation itself. Washington funnels huge sums of money into NGOs inside Russia that serve as Washington Fifth Columns and work hand-in-hand with Washington to discredit Russian free elections, to demonize Putin and the Russian government, to spread anti-Russian propaganda and agitation. It is amazing how many Russians actually believe the Western propaganda.

Washington is also working to isolate China with the Trans-Pacific-Partnership, but at this time is primarily focused on destabilizing and isolating Russia. Washington is desperate to break up the BRICS, the emerging organization of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. With the largest countries and half of the world’s population, the BRICS organization is emerging as a political and economic power, especially with the organization’s plan to cease using the US dollar as reserve currency. Ringing Russia with US missile bases on Russia’s borders impairs Russian sovereignty and independence and, thus, weakens the BRICS as a countervailing power to Washington.

Many have been deceived by Washington’s propaganda. The world is slowly waking up, but is it in time?

The US media and much of Europe’s speak with one voice parroting Washington’s propaganda, demonizing Washington’s targets, and preparing insouciant Western populations for more war. The Western media, like Western governments, is devoid of integrity. Liars and whores rule.

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the “Father of Reaganomics”. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, among others. He has recently published How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds and is coauthor with Lawrence Stratton of The New Color Line and The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Inside a Twitter fake account

One day earlier this month, Jim Vidmar bought 1,000 fake Twitter accounts for $58 from an online vendor in Pakistan.

He then programmed the accounts to “follow” the Twitter account of rapper Dave Murrell, who calls himself Fyrare and pays Mr. Vidmar to boost his standing on the social network. Mr. Vidmar’s fake accounts also rebroadcast Mr. Murrell’s tweets, amplifying his Twitter voice.

Mr. Murrell says he sometimes buys Twitter ads to raise his profile, “but you’ll get more with Jim.” He says many Twitter users try to make their followings look bigger than they are. “If you’re not padding your numbers, you’re not doing it right,” he says. “It’s part of the game.”

Mr. Vidmar offers a window into the shadowy world of false accounts and computerized robots on Twitter, one of the world’s largest social networks. Surrounded by a dozen computers at his home overlooking a golf course near the Las Vegas Strip, Mr. Vidmar has been buying fake accounts and unleashing them on Twitter for six years.

Today, he says he manages 10,000 robots for roughly 50 clients, who pay Mr. Vidmar to make them appear more popular and influential.

His are among millions of fake accounts on Twitter. Mr. Vidmar and other owners manage them to simulate Twitter users: they tweet; retweet, or forward, other tweets; send and reply to messages; and follow and unfollow other Twitter accounts, among other actions.

Some entertainers pay for fake followers. But false accounts can be political tools as well. In 2011, thousands of fake accounts disrupted anti-Kremlin protesters on Twitter.

The fake accounts remain a cloud over Twitter Inc. in the wake of its successful initial public offering. “Twitter is where many people get news,” says Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. “If what is trending on Twitter is being faked by robots, people need to know that. This will and should undermine trust.”

Fake accounts thrive on Twitter in part because, unlike Facebook, FB -1.01% Twitter doesn’t limit users to a single account, or require them to use their real names.

Twitter’s terms of service prohibit “mass account creation,” and the buying or selling of accounts or followers. Last spring, Twitter helped a research team apply a filter that, for a time, blocked 95% of new fake accounts.

Italian security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli say they found 20 million fake accounts for sale on Twitter this summer. That would amount to nearly 9% of Twitter’s monthly active users. The Italian researchers also found software for sale that allows spammers to create unlimited fake accounts. The researchers decoded robot-programming software to reveal how easy it is for spammers to control the convincing fakes.

In April, Twitter and the researchers applied the filter. Mr. Vidmar says he remembers the day, because most of his fake accounts were deleted, and he couldn’t create new ones. “They cleaned house,” he says.

But Mr. Vidmar and others say the underground market quickly adapted. The researchers’ system flagged accounts with incomplete profiles, no pictures, and little activity. In response, Mr. Vidmar says suppliers now fill out more account details, add pictures, and tweet from the accounts before selling them.

That drove up the cost of fake accounts. But marketers and researchers say the black market is again thriving.

Just two weeks after the crackdown, Twitter caught only about half the suspicious accounts being offered by merchants previously identified as selling fake accounts, according to the Berkeley researchers.

Mr. Vidmar says one of his suppliers is offering 150,000 fake accounts for sale. “I could go buy fake accounts from about 20 different sources right now,” he says.

Mr. Ding, the Barracuda Labs researcher, says the fake-account market is “going very strong.” He and other researchers say Twitter doesn’t appear to be applying the Berkeley researchers’ techniques to root out other fake accounts.

Mr. Vidmar’s robots have helped make his clients “trending topics” on Twitter, giving them special mention on Twitter users’ home pages. The trending topics appear just below the “promoted trend” that the company sells for as much as $200,000 a day. The trending topics aren’t marked as “sponsored,” so they appear more genuine.

Rapper Tony Benson says hiring Mr. Vidmar to promote his account on Twitter is “the best decision I ever made.” Mr. Vidmar’s robots made the rapper, known as Philly Chase, a trending topic so often around Philadelphia that he attracted attention from local newspapers. Prominence on Twitter led to gigs, fans and ways to promote his videos, Mr. Benson says.

Mr. Vidmar uses software to follow tens of thousands of accounts for his clients, another tactic Twitter prohibits. Being followed prompts many Twitter users to return the favor, and follow his clients.

In September, Mr. Vidmar used software to follow more than 100,000 Twitter users in a week for the Australian rock band The Contagious; that boosted the band’s following by 20,000.

The band has a “verified” account, meaning it has taken extra steps to prove to Twitter that the account is real. – WSJ

Six dead in US drone strike on religious seminary

A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

The missile attack targeted a religious seminary that security officials said belonged to the Haqqani network — blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan — in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Earlier this month the network’s chief financier Nasirudddin Haqqani was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.

Thursday’s drone strike was the first in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal district on November 1.

That attack prompted a furious response from Pakistan, with the interior minister accusing Washington of sabotaging fledgling peace efforts with the Taliban and opposition parties calling for a blockade of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan.

“The drone strike targeting the seminary killed six people,” police official Farid Khan told AFP.

Two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah and said they were both members of the Haqqani network.

“The seminary belonged to one Qari Noor Muhammad, a previously unknown figure. It was not clear if he was present in the seminary at the time of attack”, an official said.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, who are blamed for numerous bloody attacks in Afghanistan including one on the US embassy in Kabul in 2011.

US officials have in the past accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, which has bases in the tribal districts.

Since 2004 the United States has carried out hundreds of missile attacks from unmanned aircraft on suspected militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The vast majority of them have hit targets in the seven tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, which have a separate legal and political governance system from the rest of the country.

Thursday was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called “frontier region”.

The number and identity of casualties is often hard to determine because the tribal areas are off-limits to foreign journalists and aid organisations, but the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates deaths at between 2,500 and 3,700.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks, according to various estimates, prompting outrage in Pakistan and abroad.

A major report last month from rights campaigners Amnesty International said the US may be guilty of war crimes.

The Pakistani government officially condemns drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and last month Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to halt the programme during a meeting in Washington.

Despite their deep unpopularity in Pakistan, the US sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the tribal areas.

Cricket chief lashes out at ‘racist abuse’

Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland has lashed out at “racist comments” directed at Muslim Fawad Ahmed after the leg-spinner asked not to wear a kit displaying the logo of beer brand VB.

Pakistan-born Ahmed, who became an Australian citizen in July after his application was fast-tracked, did not have the logo on his shirt during his international debut in last week’s T20 matches against England.

It emerged Tuesday that he had “expressed discomfort with the conflict this created for him, due to his religious beliefs”.

Cricket Australia agreed with his request to wear an unbranded shirt, but this sparked critical comments on the Cricket Australia website and other social media.

“Legitimate reason RELIGION, no its not, it’s a game of cricket, not praying at a church,” said one reaction.

“It is driven by money and fans not by religious fanatics. Those who don’t like the Australian culture should leave, or keep misguided values to themselves.”

Sutherland said he was disgusted with such comments.

“Cricket Australia would like to express its extreme disappointment over racist comments towards Fawad Ahmed on social media… some of which are falsely attributed to former Australian cricketer Dean Jones,” he said in a statement late Tuesday.

“CA does not condone racism in any way, shape or form.

“CA is fully supportive of Fawad’s personal beliefs and he is a valued and popular member of the Australian cricket team and the wider cricket community.”

South African batsman Hashim Amla, also a Muslim, is another player in a similar situation and has been permitted not to wear the logo of Cricket South Africa sponsor Castle, a beer company, on his kit.

The sensitive issue also reared up in English football with striker Papiss Cisse pulling out of Newcastle United’s pre-season tour this year, saying he was not prepared to promote the club’s sponsors, money-lending company Wonga.

But the Senegal international has since donned a Newcastle shirt featuring the logo after talks with the club and Islamic teachers.

The rise of Ahmed, a former refugee who fled his home in the Pakistan border region near Afghanistan, where he said he was targeted by the Taliban, has seen him become a hero to some in Australia’s immigrant communities. – Sapa/AFP

More than 600 migrants land in Italy

An earlier boatload of migrants rescued by the Italian Coast Guard

More than 600 migrants from Eritrea, Pakistan, Syria and other countries have landed on Italian shores on three boats, coast guards said Tuesday.

The coast guard rescued 336 people aboard a boat near Porto Empedocle in Sicily and escorted them ashore, where most of them fled from police.

The migrants said they were all from Eritrea.

Dramatic video images shot from a border guard vessel showed the migrants including women and children being helped off a heavily overcrowded boat at night.

A second boat with 233 people aboard was also spotted by a navy vessel and taken to the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost point and a major arrival point for migrant boats from Libya and Tunisia.

A third boat with 67 people aboard arrived in a small port near Syracuse in southeast Sicily. The migrants said they were all from Pakistan and Syria.

“I want to be a human like everybody. In Syria, everything is destroyed,” one of the migrants told news channel SkyTG24. Another said the journey had “lasted 10 days and we ran out of water”.

Local coast guard official Luca Sanciglio said: “We were told about the impending landing by a fisherman who spotted them. The boat was not stable so we had to ferry them to the shore.”

“We have a duty to rescue everyone 24 hours a day and that includes immigrants,” he said.

“After so many days and nights of suffering, they just want water and someone to welcome them,” he added.

Most of the thousands of economic migrants and refugees who have landed in Italy in recent months have landed in Libya from other parts of Africa.

Some 350 migrants — many of them from Egypt and Syria — arrived on four boats in Sicily on Monday.

Calmer weather conditions and growing unrest in north Africa have led to a surge in migrant arrivals in recent weeks.

Italy’s interior ministry said 24,277 migrants landed in Italy in the 12-month period between August 1, 2012, and August 10, 2013. – AFP

Mass jail break in Pakistan

The assault on the heavily guarded Central Prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan took place despite reports that regional officials had received intelligence a fortnight ago suggesting such an attack was imminent.

The carefully planned attack underlines the growing capabilities of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban, an offshoot of the Islamist insurgents of the same name in neighboring Afghanistan.

Fighting continued into the early hours of Tuesday, with explosions and machine gunfire rattling the city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on the edge of Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

At least 12 people were killed, officials said, including five policemen and four prisoners from the minority Shi’ite sect whose throats were slashed by gunmen, officials said. The Taliban are mostly majority Sunni Muslims.

Mushtaq Jadoon, the town’s civil commissioner, said the 253 escaped prisoners included 30 top militants and six people on death row. Those who escaped are believed to have been whisked away to nearby South and North Waziristan, areas where the Taliban has strongholds.

As the attack unfolded, gunmen blew up electricity lines to the prison and detonated bombs to breach the outer walls.

They fought their way inside using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, and called the names of Taliban prisoners they wanted to release through loud speakers.

Once inside, attackers shot open most of the locks and used bombs to blast their way deep into the prison, shouting “All the locks are broken! Those who want to escape, now is your chance,” prison officials who were there at the time told Reuters.

Security forces said they had imposed a curfew on the city and the gunbattle was over by dawn. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw security forces and bomb disposal squads conducting searches amid ruined walls strewn with bullet holes.

The attack came a year after a similar mass jailbreak in the northern town of Bannu which Taliban militants said was carried out with inside help from prison guards.

There was no official comment from the central government.

Another security official said provincial authorities received warning of the impending attack two weeks ago.

He said phone intercepts indicated the militants had been planning a jail break and interrogations of captured fighters confirmed it. Security officials had alerted the provincial governor of the threat based on the intercepts.

As the gunbattle unfolded, gunmen took over a nearby house and hospital, holding the residents hostage as they fired on police from the rooftops and laid ambushes for reinforcements.

A senior Taliban official told Reuters separately the attack on the prison was masterminded by Adnan Rashid, a Taliban commander who was himself freed when his prison in the northern town of Bannu was overran by militants last year.

After that attack, militants told Reuters they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were there lacked sufficient ammunition. – Reuters

US drone kills 16 suspected militants in Pakistan

Unmanned U.S. aircraft fired four missiles at a house in northwest Pakistan before dawn Wednesday, killing 16 suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The strike elicited a swift condemnation by the Pakistani government, which released a statement saying the strikes are a violation of its sovereignty.

The strike in the Sarai Darpa Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region also wounded two suspected militants, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The suspected militants who were targeted were believed to be from the Afghan Haqqani network. U.S. officials consider the Haqqani network to be one of the most dangerous militant factions fighting American troops in neighboring Afghanistan. The leadership of the Haqqani network pledges allegiance to Taliban chief Mullah Omar but operates fairly independently.

U.S. drone strikes have become a serious source of tension between Washington and Islamabad. The Pakistani government regularly denounces the strikes as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, even though senior officials are known to have supported some of the attacks in the past.

“The Government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent civilian lives and have human rights and humanitarian implications,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Wednesday.

“These drone strikes have a negative impact on the mutual desire of both countries to forge a cordial and cooperative relationship and to ensure peace and stability in the region,” the ministry said.

U.S. officials rarely provide details publicly about the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan.

Elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, militants attacked a police post before dawn Wednesday and killed six policemen, said a local government administrator, Habibullah Khan.

Ten policemen were wounded in the attack about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city of Peshawar, said another government official, Feroz Shah. The post was staffed by both paramilitary police from the Frontier Constabulary force and also by tribal policemen.

Khan said policemen retaliated in a gunbattle that lasted several hours and killed several militants.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Pakistani Taliban have carried out many similar attacks against security personnel in the area. – AP

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Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this report.

US drone kills 5 militants in northwest Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani intelligence officials say a U.S. drone strike has killed five militants in northwest Pakistan.

Two intelligence officials said at least seven missiles were fired from U.S. drones Saturday at a vehicle and a house in the village of Degan in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan near the Afghan border.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

They said the area is dominated by anti-American militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. They did not know whether the killed men belong to his group.

The CIA-run drone program is controversial in Pakistan where many call it an infringement on the nation’s sovereignty. The U.S. maintains it is necessary tool to combat militants. – AP