Pakistan says U.S. strike killed 11 infantrymen

The Pakistani army Wednesday accused the U.S. military of an “unprovoked and cowardly” airstrike that resulted in the deaths of 11 Pakistani infantrymen, threatening the cooperation between the two countries in combating terrorism.

In an unusually strong statement, the Pakistani army added that it reserved the right to protect citizens from unwarranted aggression.

As American officials expressed regret for the deaths without acknowledging responsibility, the incident threatened to aggravate already tense relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, whose newly elected government has faced accusations from the U.S. military that it has failed to crack down on extremists in Pakistan’s western tribal areas.

A senior official acting as an intermediary between the two countries said there was a flurry of high-level phone calls and meetings Wednesday attempting to defuse the incident. Top Pakistani officials were so irate that they summoned U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson to the Foreign Ministry to complain, the official said.

“Nobody wants this to become bigger than it is,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss negotiations publicly. “It is just a bad time for this to happen. You want to just play it down and figure out a way of calming the rage.”

U.S. airstrikes in Pakistani territory have occurred with some regularity in recent months, and are a source of friction between Washington and Islamabad.

Many of the previous attacks have targeted Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, U.S. officials say. But such incidents arouse the anger of Pakistanis who see the strikes as an infringement of their sovereignty.

Many in Pakistan accuse President Pervez Musharraf of being too accepting of such U.S. attacks, and the nation’s newly elected government is trying to sideline the president and reduce his powers.

The U.S. State Department expressed regret for the deaths of the Pakistani infantrymen after a gunfight involving U.S. troops on the Afghanistan border escalated Tuesday night, leading to a U.S. airstrike that Pakistani officials said killed members of the military’s Frontier Corps.

But U.S. officials also said they had yet to confirm that the strike, in which multiple bombs were dropped, was responsible for the deaths.

“This is a complex attack involving an airstrike and artillery and a number of forces . . . along a border that has traditionally been a problem and often the cause of some confusion as to who the forces are that are involved,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, called the incident “regrettable” and said it illustrated the need for better cross-border communications between the two militaries.

The Pakistani army said 11 members of the Mohmand Rifles, including a major, were killed in the airstrike in the rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The Mohmand Rifles is a unit of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force deployed to maintain security in the western tribal areas, which are riddled with militant hide-outs.

According to U.S. military officials in Washington and Afghanistan, a U.S.-led patrol that had moved into Kunar province as part of an anti- insurgent offensive came under small-arms fire just 200 yards from the Pakistani border. One official said the attackers fled into Pakistan when U.S. soldiers opened fire to defend themselves.

A U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base outside Kabul, the Afghan capital, said the operation in Kunar had been cleared with Pakistani authorities and insisted that coalition forces stopped short of the Pakistani border when pursuing the attackers.

The spokesman added, however, that coalition forces began firing artillery and called in an airstrike once they had identified the “anti-Afghan forces” on a live video feed from a surveillance drone.

But Pakistani military sources said the U.S. warplanes bombed a Pakistani border outpost northwest of Peshawar.

The Pakistani sources said the U.S. forces were working with the Afghan army when the fighting broke out, and accused Afghan troops of crossing into Pakistan to set up a checkpoint.

Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, told the Dawn newspaper that eight of the group’s fighters were killed repelling an attempt by North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Afghan soldiers to push into Pakistan.

But the U.S. military denied that account, saying in a statement that “at no time did coalition ground forces cross into Pakistan.”

Pakistan’s new ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said the Islamabad government would not regard the military strike as an act of intentional hostility.

“It is unfortunate what happened and it is certainly not conducive to winning the hearts and minds of Pakistanis at a time when there are not many people in Pakistan who want U.S.-Pakistani relations to progress,” Haqqani said. “But we will try to move beyond this and to not let this hold our relationship back.”

U.S. officials believe attempts by the new Pakistani government to negotiate peace pacts with tribal leaders have enabled militants to flow back into Afghanistan and allowed Al Qaeda leaders to strengthen their support in the region.

U.S. Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that any new Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. probably would originate in the tribal regions.

American airstrikes against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan are mostly carried out by unmanned planes that are directed by the CIA, U.S. officials say.

In March, an acknowledged U.S. missile strike aimed at Taliban militants in the tribal area of North Waziristan reportedly killed four civilians; the next week, 18 people died in an airstrike in South Waziristan believed to have been carried out by the U.S.

A similar raid in late January killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior Al Qaeda leader.

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henry.chu@latimes.com

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar, Times staff writers Chu from New Delhi and Spiegel from Washington. Times staff writer Josh Meyer in Washington contributed to this report.