Pakistan condemns U.S. strike from Afghanistan

U.S. forces on Thursday acknowledged carrying out a cross-border missile strike that reportedly killed four civilians in Pakistan, and six Afghan civilians were killed by a suicide bomber targeting American troops.

The civilian deaths on both sides of the border came days before a new Pakistani government is to be sworn in, one that may prove a less pliant ally in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic militants than President Pervez Musharraf has been.

Pakistan sharply protested the cross-border strike, which it said killed four civilians early Wednesday in the tribal area of North Waziristan. A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan said the assault, which was carried out with precision-guided munitions, had been aimed at Taliban militants.

The spokesman, Maj. Chris Belcher, said Pakistani authorities had been informed of the strike after the fact. The target was a compound about a mile inside Pakistan where senior aides to Siraj Haqqani, a prominent Taliban commander, were believed to be sheltering.

Fighters often slip back and forth across the rugged, unmarked frontier, and Pakistan’s tribal areas have become a haven for militant groups.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led coalition in Afghanistan said this week that it considered Haqqani the most dangerous Taliban commander in the Afghanistan war. He is blamed for orchestrating scores of suicide bombings and other attacks, including one last week that killed two NATO soldiers and injured more than a dozen Afghan civilians.

Thursday’s attack in Kabul, near the international airport, was aimed at a two-vehicle U.S. military convoy. In addition to at least six civilians killed, more than a dozen were wounded.

Western news agencies reported that the Taliban had claimed responsibility.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the bombing a cowardly attack, one of many he said was meant to harm innocent civilians. However, public anger over such attacks by militants often rebounds against Karzai’s government and the presence of about 50,000 foreign troops.

Fighting between insurgents and NATO-led forces has mainly been concentrated in the country’s south and east. Afghan officials said Thursday that at least 41 militants had been killed by U.S. and Afghan forces in clashes a day earlier in the southwestern province of Nimruz.

The U.S. strike in Pakistan highlighted a highly sensitive issue in the two nations’ relations. Many Pakistanis consider such actions a violation of national sovereignty, but Musharraf’s government is thought to have given tacit assent for some missile strikes aimed at senior Taliban and Al Qaeda figures, usually carried out with unmanned drones.

One such strike in North Waziristan at the end of January killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior associate of Osama bin Laden.

But strikes that kill civilians instead of militants invariably spark a public outcry. Belcher, the military spokesman, said the latest one had been carried out on the basis of “reliable intelligence” placing Haqqani associates in the walled compound that was hit.

Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said the dead were two women and two children.

Pakistan’s two main opposition parties, which won last month’s elections and are forming a coalition government, have said the strategy against Islamic militants needs retooling, perhaps to include talks with the insurgents.

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laura.king@latimes.com

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Special correspondent Faiez reported from Kabul and Times staff writer King from Istanbul, Turkey.