Pakistan Slams Recent US Drone Strike

Local Editor

Pakistan has condemned a recent US assassination drone strike, which claimed the lives of seven people, saying that the drone attacks by the US violate Pakistani territorial integrity.

The deadly attack, which was the first of such strikes since the country's May 11 general elections, took place on Wednesday, after US drones fired two missiles at a house in Chashma village, near North Waziristan's Miranshah.
"Any drone strike is against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan and we condemn it," a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

On Friday, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry voiced opposition to ongoing CIA-operated drone strikes. The ministry said the attacks claim the lives of civilians and are in breach of international law, Pakistan's sovereignty, and territorial integrity.
US President Barack Obama issued a decree last Friday that allows the use of drones outside the borders of the United States. He adamantly defended the controversial strikes as legal and necessary to what he called US national security, adding that this decree will enable the United States to "carry out effective operations against the terrorists."

Drone strikes have become a signature counterterrorism tool used by the Obama administration and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and have been attributed with killing roughly 5,000 persons abroad, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). But under the covert and protective umbrella of the Central Intelligence Agency, little has been formally acknowledged from Washington as to the details of these strikes.

Source: News Agencies