Pakistanis protest deadly CIA missile attack (AP) Updated: 2006-01-15 22:15
On Sunday, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, citing unidentified senior officials,
reported that two clerics, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat, both wanted
for harboring militants, also were invited to the dinner with al-Zawahri.
A senior army official said Sunday that "foreigners" were reported in the
area, but there was no information al-Zawahri was among them.
Al-Zawahri may have come to area to meet with his wife who is from the
Mahmoond tribe, which is predominant in the area around Damadola, for last
week's Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, according to one Pakistan intelligence
official.
In a speech broadcast Sunday on state-run Pakistan Television, President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf did not address the strike directly but warned his countrymen
not to harbor militants, saying it would only increase violence within
Pakistan's borders.
"If we keep sheltering foreign terrorists here ... our future will not be
good. Remember what I say," Musharraf said in the speech, made Saturday in the
northwestern town of Sawabi.
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.
Ghafoor Ahmed, a leader in the coalition of anti-U.S. Islamic groups that
organized nationwide rallies Sunday, called for Musharraf's resignation. "The
army cannot defend the country under in his leadership," he said.
On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen chanting "God is great!" took to the
streets of a town near Damadola to castigate the attack. Elsewhere in the area,
a mob burned the office of a U.S.-supported aid group near Damadola.
In Damadola, villagers said all the dead were local people and denied
harboring al-Zawahri or any other Islamic extremists.
The strike left three homes hundreds of yards apart in ruins. People in the
area said the blasts could be felt miles away.
Doctors told AP at least 17 people died, including women and children, but
residents put the death toll at more than 30.
Bin Laden and al-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 terror attacks.
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