Citizens protest against suspected US missile strike on Waziristan

Islamabad: Pakistanis on Sunday protested a suspected American missile strike that intelligence officials said killed a British citizen linked to a plot to blow up jetliners, saying their Western-allied government must stop the cross-border attacks.

Pakistani intelligence officials said British citizen Rashid Rauf died in Saturday's raid, but there was no independent corroboration of the death.

His death would be a major blow to Al Qaida and Taliban extremists believed sheltering in the lawless region.

It would also bolster US claims that missile strikes on extremist strongholds in northwestern Pakistan are protecting the West against another September 11, 2001-style terrorist attack.

About 100 people in the eastern city of Multan demonstrated against the strike, chanting 'Down with America' and burning an effigy of US President George W. Bush.

"The government should take concrete measures to protect the country's sovereignty instead of just paying lip service," said one demonstrator, Arif Fasih Allah.

Three Pakistani intelligence officials and a senior government official, citing reports from field agents as well as intercepted militant communications, said Rauf and a Saudi militant named Abu Zubair Al Masri were among five killed in the raid in North Waziristan.

"We got it confirmed from our own sources," said one of the officials, who declined to give more details.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman confirmed that Rauf and Al Masri were targeted in the raid. She did not elaborate.

Sherry reiterated her government's complaint that missile attacks are fanning anti-Americanism and extremism tearing at both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"It would have been better if our authorities had been alerted for local action," Sherry said. "Drone incursions create a strong backlash."

North Waziristan is one of the tribal areas where Taliban fighters operate out of bases to stage attacks across the border into Afghanistan and lies in the rugged frontier region where Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden may be hiding.

Taliban spokesman Ahmad Allah Ahmadi insisted only civilians and no foreigners were killed in the pre-dawn missile attack in the village of Ali Khel, which lies in an area long reputed to be a militant stronghold.

Rauf, who is of Pakistani origin, has been on the run since last December, when he escaped from police escorting him back to jail after an extradition hearing in Islamabad.

Britain was seeking his return ostensibly as a suspect in the 2002 killing of his uncle there, but Rauf had allegedly been in contact with a group in Britain planning to smuggle liquid explosives onto trans-Atlantic flights and also with a suspected Al Qaida mastermind of the plot in Afghanistan.

Nato opinion
'Cooperation at its best'

Nato said yesterday cooperation between its troops in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army is the best it has ever been, as the two forces hit Taliban insurgents in a coordinated operation from both sides of the border.

Tension has risen between Pakistan and Western forces in Afghanistan in recent months over increased US missile strikes against Taliban and Al Qaida militants on the Pakistani side of the mountainous, porous border.

But operations launched by Nato forces in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar province and by Pakistani troops in the adjacent Bajaur district on the other side of the border represented a new level of cooperation, the spokesman said.

"The cooperation with the Pakistani forces is ... the best it has ever been," said Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

The cooperation was the result of tripartite meetings between ISAF, the Afghan military and Pakistani forces, he said.

"This is not only a cooperation in the execution. This is also a cooperation that has happened in the planning," Blanchette said.

- Reuters