Pakistanis furious over US attack

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's pro-US military ruler, is facing nationwide anger towards the United States after at least 22 villagers including five children were killed by missiles fired by a remote controlled, CIA-operated drone on Jan. 13. Some residents put the death toll at more than 30. Pakistan lodged an official protest with the US embassy the next day as thousands of people chanting "Down with America" took to the streets in angry protests in major cities. Many demonstrators demanded Musharraf's resignation. At least 10,000 protesters from liberal and Islamic political groups, in a rare gesture of solidarity, joined an anti-US protest in Karachi while smaller protests were reported across Pakistan, including the cities of Islamabad, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar. To date, the US has made no comment on the attack, which missed its suspected principal target, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second-in-command. Confusion over the incident has deepened in Pakistan because of contradictory official statements. Although the administrator of the Bajur tribal region where the strike occurred said four or five "foreign terrorists" had been killed, the federal information minister said there was "no information about the presence of any foreign terrorists" in Bajur. "Such a violation of our territories will not be tolerated next time," he said. Officially, Pakistan does not allow US military incursions in its territory, and the CIA has declined to comment on the strike. But intelligence sources said the site was struck by several missiles fired from unmanned Predator aircraft. The missile strike was the third airstrike in recent weeks inside Pakistani territory by US aircraft against alleged terrorist targets. Earlier this month, a strike in North Waziristan, another semiautonomous tribal area near the Afghan border, killed eight members of a family, prompting a previous protest by the Pakistani government. It has fueled increasing anger in the country, where many of the 150 million residents oppose the government's involvement in the US-led "war on terror." "America raised the bogey of Zawahiri to provide justification for this attack," said Meraj-ul-Huda, a local leader of Pakistan's main Islamic alliance, Mattahida Majlis-e-Amal, who was attending the demonstration in Karachi. Another member of the alliance, Liaqat Baloch, told protesters in Lahore that Gen. Musharraf should stand down. "It is a threat to our sovereignty and shame for Musharraf's government that it failed to protect the country and the lives of its people," he said. Tensions remained high near the village of Damadola, the site of the attack, after police tear-gassed thousands of protesters who torched the offices of Associated Development Construction, a non-governmental organization funded by the US Agency for International Development. About 8,000 tribesmen staged a rally in the town of Inayat Qala and an estimated 5,000 people gathered at a stadium near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal zone. The White House has remained tight-lipped over the missile strike. David Almacy, a White House spokesman, would not even confirm that the attack had been carried out by the US. He said only that "President Musharraf and Pakistan is (sic) a valued ally and partner in the war on terror." However, Republican Senator John McCain defended the action two days afterward. "We have to go where these people are, and we have to take them out," he said in an interview on the CBS television network "I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again." As the dead were buried that day amid angry scenes, Damadola villagers said Zawahiri had never visited the village, and that all of the dead were local people. They confirmed that their guests had included four men who had come from Afghanistan. But they insisted that the four were not al-Qaida members as claimed. "We live on the border and all have friends and relatives on both sides," said one villager. Sahibzada Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives nearby, said the planes had targeted three houses belonging to jewelry dealers. "The houses have been razed," he said. "There is nothing left. Pieces of the missiles are scattered all around. Everything has been blackened in a 100-yard radius." "This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack," said Shah Zaman, a jeweler who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. "They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them... or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know [Zawahiri]. He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs." Rashid said that he had seen a drone surveying the area hours before the attack. "A drone has been flying over the area for the last three, four days, and I had a feeling that something nasty was going to happen," he said. "There was no foreigner there–we never saw a single foreigner here. They were all local people, jewelers and shop-keepers, who used to commute between Bajur and their village. We knew them." The day before, Rashid, a legislator from Pakistan's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, condemned the airstrike as a "slap on the face of the country's sovereignty" before a crowd of protesters chanting anti-US slogans. "It is shameful that innocent people of Pakistan are being killed by a foreign country with total impunity," he told the protesters. Rallies around the country continued fitfully on Jan. 15. In Karachi, some 5,000 demonstrators gathered for a political rally, but in Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Multan, the crowds were smaller, of only a few hundred people. Demonstrators chanted "Death to America," "Stop bombing innocent people," and burned US flags. Protesters also denounced Musharraf, accusing him of being a US puppet and of allowing the attack. "Our rulers are traitors," and "Our rulers are cowards and surrogates of America," protesters chanted in the capital, Islamabad.