According to officials familiar with the situation, US drones fired a pair of missiles against a house in Datta Khel today, destroying the building and killing at least seven people. Two others were wounded.
None of the casualties were identified, but Pakistani officials, as is so often the case, labeled them all “suspected militants.” They claimed the owner of the house was believed to be a member of the Haqqani Network, though exactly who it was or what his position was is unknown.
This is often the case in US drone strikes against targets all over the world, as the use of “targeted strikes” means the US rarely knows the identity of who they are killing, but rather assumes that any group of people gathered in numbers in targeted areas must be up to something.
In North Waziristan this has been particularly true, for while the US has killed many hundreds in the area in recent years, no more than a handful were ever conclusively identified as militants, and a few others, the subjects of lawsuits, identified as civilians. The overwhelming bulk are simply unidentified.
