Protests erupt over US attack
Anti-US Islamic groups began nationwide protests today against a deadly CIA airstrike that killed innocent civilians instead of the apparent target – top al-Qaida lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri.
The protests gathered pace as Pakistan’s president Gen Pervez Musharraf warned his countrymen not to habour militants, saying it would only increase violence within the country’s borders.
“If we kept sheltering foreign terrorists here … our future will not be good,” Musharraf said in speech broadcast today by state-run Pakistan Television.
Musharraf, who spoke to a gathering in the northwestern town of Sawabi, did not directly mention Friday’s attack that killed at least 17 people, including women and children, in a village of Damadola, just a few miles from the Afghanistan border.
But his government has protested to the US Embassy amid growing frustration over a recent series of suspected US attacks along the frontier, apparently aimed at Islamic militants.
Today more than 600 people braved the rain to rally against the airstrike in the town of Samarbagh, about 31 miles east of Damadola.
Protesters chanted “Death to America,” “Death to Bush” and “A friend of America is a traitor,” while also denouncing Musharraf for co-operating with the United States.
A rally speaker said Washington was targeting Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons.
“Pakistan is a nuclear power, and America has tightened the siege against it,” said Aizaz-ul Mulk Afkari, a leader from Hezb-ul Mujahedeen militant group.
A coalition of anti-US Islamic groups planned more protests elsewhere later today.
A day earlier, about 8,000 tribesmen staged a rally in the town of Inayat Qala, and a mob set fire to the office of a US-backed aid agency in a nearby village.
Survivors in Damadola denied militants were in their hamlet, but some reports quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.
A law enforcement official in Washington said the FBI expected to conduct DNA tests to determine victims’ identities.
In Washington, counterterrorism officials declined to comment on reports that CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant.
A news report today said the mission was launched on intelligence that al-Zawahri had been invited to dinner that night in one of three houses levelled by the attack.
