Report: US drones kill three in Pakistan

Three suspected militants were killed by armed U.S. drones in northwest Pakistan on Thursday in the first air strikes since Islamabad demanded President Obama end the controversial counterterrorism tactic. 

Three other individuals were wounded during the drone attack in the town of Miranshah, along the volatile North Waziristan area of the Afghan-Pakistan border, Pakistani security officials told CNN.

The area is reportedly the home of the Pakistani Taliban. The Afghan faction, led by Mullah Omar, is headquartered in Quetta, Pakistan along the southern portion of the Afghan border. 

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the attack, arguing the continued offensive against Islamic militant groups in Pakistan is a violation of the country’s sovereignty. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif carried that same message to Washington during recent talks with President Obama in October. 

During the meeting, Sharif emphasized the fact that continued U.S. drone strikes in the country would accelerate, not eliminate, the rise of Islamic radicalism in the country. 

“The more the drones, the more the terrorists get multiplied. You kill one man, his sons, his father, his brothers — they become terrorists. So this is something that is not helping at all,” Sharif said shortly after his meeting with Obama earlier this month. 

The strike also comes at a sensitive time for Sharif’s government, which has reportedly launched peace talks with the Taliban’s Pakistani faction. 

“The dialogue with the Taliban has started. He said that he hoped and prayed the dialogue works within the constitutional framework of Pakistan,” according to a joint statement by Sharif and British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. 

The talks were announced during a bilateral security summit between Sharif and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in London, hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron. 

The Obama administration was forced into damage control last month as the White House pushed back against Secretary of State John Kerry’s pledge to end armed drone operations in Pakistan.

During a diplomatic visit to Islamabad in August, Kerry told Sharif that Washington plans to severely curtail, and eventually end, armed drone operations in the country. 

The White House reacted quickly to Kerry’s comments, saying his statements did not reflect a coming change in the use of armed drones against terrorist targets or overall U.S. counterterrorism policy. 

“Clearly the goal of counterterrorism operations, broadly speaking, is to get to a place where we don’t have to use them because the threat goes away,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said at the time.