US Drone Strike Kills Five in North Waziristan

Attack Targeted House in Dawar Musaki Village

A US drone fired two missiles at a house in Dawar Musaki, a village in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, killing five people within according to reports from security officials, who said some of the slain might be militant fighters.

It was the second US drone strike against the area in the past three days, after a Saturday attack killed four people in a car near Mohammed Khel. The identities of those slain in that attack are not known either.

The attacks come just weeks ahead of a high profile anti-drone rally organized by the Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) party leader Imran Khan, whose popularity is soaring in recent months and is seen as a major political player for the next election.

In recent comments Khan blasted the strikes, saying that there is “no reliable way” to know who the US is actually killing in those strikes, and urged the US to release a list of actual names of the thousands of people killed in such attacks. To date, the unofficial list of names is only a few dozen, with the vast, vast majority of people forever labeled unidentified “suspects.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.