By Robert Windrem, Mushaq Yusufzai and Carol Grisanti
Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials tell NBC News that Wednesday’s Predator attack on a village in northwest Pakistan was not insignificant, that a “high-value target … an Arab” was among those killed. U.S. officials believe the unnamed target was planning attacks outside Pakistan, “so we nailed him,” in the words of one.
By all accounts, on Wednesday evening, two male guesthouses in the village of Damodola were struck by Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones. The drones are normally operated by the CIA. Inside the guesthouses were local fighters along with several “foreigners,” including the Arab fighter, according to the U.S. officials and locals.
Although the number of missiles fired remains uncertain, recent attacks have involved multiple volleys from multiple Predators. Predators now carry up to six Hellfires.
The attack is the second on male guesthouses, known as hujras, in Damodola in the Bajaur Agency near the Afghanistan border. On Jan. 13, 2006, Predators fired multiple volleys of Hellfires at a guesthouse, killing 18 people. The target in that attack was al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but he had already left and a week later ridiculed the attacks as just the latest U.S. failure in the war of terror.
One senior U.S. official said there were “no household names — no Bin Laden, no Zawahiri, no Sayed Sheikh (Al-Qaida’s No. 3) struck,” but a second official said in spite of that, the main target was “high value.” Moreover, said the second official, “This guy was planning attacks, so we nailed him.” A second official said the presence of a high-ranking al-Qaida official, an Arab, in an area dominated by local jihadi organization presupposed a planning session.
Militants quickly disposed of the bodies, with locals saying dozens of their number “suddenly appeared” and surrounded the entire town. They wouldn’t allow villagers to enter the building before all the bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the two-room guesthouse, part of a compound owned by a local leader.
“As usual, militants retrieved bodies of the foreigners and buried them at an undisclosed location,” claimed a local resident of Damodola who is close to tribal militants. U.S. officials have said the quick burial is done partly for religious reasons, but also to hinder the identification of those killed.
Death toll estimates as high as 30
Villagers claimed that before the attack around 30 people, some of them Arabs, were staying in the compound. The death toll estimates ranged from 11 to as many as 30, but with so many bodies disposed of so quickly there was no official count.
Another villager, Sherzada, said most of the bodies were disfigured beyond recognition.
“All the bodies were split into pieces and scattered in the building,” he said in a telephone interview after visiting the destroyed house.
However, local representatives of the Taliban dismissed the possibility that the men killed were planning any attacks and said the men were there to attend the wedding of an Arab fighter to a local woman. (U.S. intelligence officials have said in the past that such intermarriage is common. Once married, they say, the Arabs are then considered part o the local clan and are protected as such.)
Maulvi Omar, who is the militants’ spokesman, told NBC News that 11 people were killed in the attack. Among the dead, he said, were five local militants and six from neighboring areas. Omar denied the presence of any foreigners or other senior militants in the building. He added, “I am surprised as why did they target this building because there were no senior Taliban commanders.
“We want our government to clearly warn the NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan not to target its citizens in future otherwise our forces would respond accordingly,” he said, adding that if the government remained silent over the killing of its citizens, then militants would have no other option but to launch attacks on security forces and government installations.
“Taliban never forgive their enemy, which must be clear to everybody,” Omar said.
The government of Pakistan denied any knowledge of what happened. Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told The News, an English-language Pakistani newspaper, that he was not aware of any such incident.
He also said that Pakistan had not carried out the attack and that Pakistan’s regular army had no presence in Bajaur.
Pakistani officials have quietly said that under new arrangements with the United States, the CIA must first “consult” with Pakistan before an attack. In the past, the CIA was only required to “inform” the Pakistanis. However, say U.S. officials, the agreement also gives the U.S. more latitude in identifying suspected al-Qaida targets, and hence a continued free hand in taking them out.
