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Pakistan condemns alleged U.S. strike

DAMADOLA, Pakistan - Pakistani officials on Saturday angrily condemned a purported CIA airstrike meant to target al-Qaida's No. 2 man, saying he wasn't there and "innocent civilians" were among at least 17 men, women and children killed in a village near the Afghan border.

Thousands of tribesmen staged protests and a mob set fire to the office of a U.S.-backed aid agency as Pakistan's people and government showed increasing frustration over a series of suspected U.S. attacks along the frontier that appear aimed at Islamic militants.

Survivors in Damadola denied militants were in their hamlet, but there were news reports quoting unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington declined to comment on U.S. media reports that CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles Friday at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant whose videos have made him the voice of al-Qaida.

Bin Laden and Zawahri, both of whom have $25-million U.S. bounties on their heads, are believed to have been hiding along the rugged Pakistan-Afghan frontier since the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In Washington, Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials did not immediately provide additional details about the attack.

Blair Jones, a spokesman for the White House, said Saturday that he had no information on the incident.

In Pakistan's strongest reaction, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed called the attack "highly condemnable" and said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it protested to U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker over the "loss of innocent civilian lives."

Neither addressed the target of the airstrike. But the Associated Press reported that two unidentified senior Pakistani security officials confirmed that Zawahri was the intended victim and said Pakistan's assessment was that the CIA acted on incorrect information.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf mentioned the attacks during a meeting Saturday with officials from the town of Sawabi, according to a local reporter. Musharraf was quoted as saying: "We are looking into it, as to who has done it. We are looking into it, that there were people who came from outside."

In a speech to gathered townspeople, Musharraf warned that aiding militants was dangerous.

"If we harbor foreign terrorists, those who carry out bomb blasts throughout the world, then remember that our future is not good," he said. "People should not side with foreign militants, they should tell us about them so we take action against them."

Many in this nation of 150-million people object to Musharraf's alliance with Washington in the war on international terror groups, seeing it as a veiled campaign against Muslims.

In the town of Khaar, the central administrative center of Bajaur, thousands of tribesmen, led by a local parliamentarian, protested the killings Saturday, chanting anti-American and antigovernment slogans.

After the rally dispersed, 800 to 900 men went on the rampage and attacked the offices of two nongovernmental organizations in the town, according to a local reporter. The crowd looted computers from an U.S.-financed aid organization, called BEST, and then set the entire compound ablaze. The office of an Italian aid group, Intersos, was smashed and looted before the authorities intervened.

In Damadola, villagers said all the dead were local people and denied harboring Zawahri or any other Islamic extremists in the ethnic Pashtun hamlet about 4 miles from the border with Afghanistan.

"I don't know him. He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs," said Shah Zaman, whose house was one of those destroyed in the attack.

The strike left three homes hundreds of yards apart in ruins. People in the area said the blasts could be felt miles away.

Doctors said at least 17 people died, including women and children, but residents put the death toll at more than 30.

While villagers denied outsiders were present, the Foreign Ministry's statement said a preliminary investigation indicated there was a "foreign presence" - which it said had most likely been targeted from across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's government insists it does not allow the 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt for Taliban fighters or al-Qaida members believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of the frontier region.

But the attack in Damadola was the latest in a string of incidents on Pakistan's side of the border in recent weeks that many people suspect were U.S. assaults that violated this Islamic country's sovereignty.

U.S. helicopters reportedly attacked a house in the North Waziristan tribal region on Jan. 7, killing eight people. On Monday, Pakistan lodged a protest with the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

In December, a senior Egyptian al-Qaida suspect, Hamza Rabia, was killed in what appeared to be a missile strike, also in North Waziristan, although Pakistan's government maintained that Rabia died in a bombmaking accident.

Damadola, the village hit by missiles, has been the focus of previous security operations. Pakistani authorities carried out an operation in the village in April 2004 against a cleric, Maulavi Faqir Mohammad, whom they blamed for giving sanctuary to militants. He has been at large since, but turned up on Friday and spoke at the funeral of the civilian dead, denouncing the strike, local residents said. He left the area immediately afterward.

Reports that Zawahri could be close to capture have surfaced before. In early 2004 during a major Pakistani counterterrorism operation in South Waziristan, Pakistani officials said he was believed to be hiding in the area. The reports were never substantiated.

Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified January 15, 2006, 01:48:18]