Islamabad - Pakistan on Wednesday lodged a formal protest
with the US government over the killing of at least 20 people,
including women and children, in a cross-border raid by American
troops in Pakistan's tribal region, warning that such attacks were
'unacceptable and constitutes a grave provocation.'
Mohammed Sadiq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry,
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson,
had been summoned to receive a formal protest over 'the gross
violation of Pakistan's territory and immense loss of civilian life'.
He added: 'We strongly condemned the helicopter-borne ground
attack, supported by air assets based in Afghanistan, on a village
near Angoor Adda in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border.'
Earlier Owais Ahmed Ghani, governor of the North-Western Frontier
Province, said in a press statement that 20 civilians 'including women
and children were martyred' in what he called an 'outrageous' attack
in the South Waziristan tribal district.
'This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the
people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces would rise to defend
the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply to all such
attacks,' he said.
'The government will try its best to protect its citizens from such
cowardly attacks in the days to come,' Ghani said.
Local residents said the pre-dawn raid targeted the house of a
tribesman, Payo Jan Wazir, in Birmal village. Some said the villagers
were preparing to go on a Ramadan fast when the attack came at around
3 am (2100 GMT).
'Ten people, including three women and two children, died during
the action at Wazir's house,' said one local resident.
The gunfire and successive blasts made the people in the
surrounding houses flee their homes in panic. The foreign troops
opened fire and killed at least five more civilians, the sources said.
Several villagers were wounded.
A local security official said the US forces might have raided the
compound to seize or kill some high-value target, as the area is a
known sanctuary for al-Qaeda militants.
The reported action in South Waziristan was the first involving US
ground troops there, although US forces have carried out several
missile attacks and airstrikes in recent months on suspected militant
hideouts.
Pakistan's top security official, Rehman Malik, told reporters on
Monday that government troops had recently narrowly missed an
opportunity to capture al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri.
But the foreign ministry spokesman warned that American and NATO
raids were 'counter-productive and certainly do not help our joint
efforts to fight terrorism.'
'On the contrary, they undermine the very basis of cooperation and
may fuel the fire of hatred and violence that we are trying to
extinguish,' Sadiq said.
Separately, Pakistan's Army also lodged a strong protest with
International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan saying that it
reserved 'the right of self-defence and retaliation' to protect its
citizens and soldiers against aggression.
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