U.S. Drone Strikes Kill 30 in Pakistan Tribal Area, PTV Says

Two U.S. drone strikes killed at least 30 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area, state-run Pakistan Television News reported today, citing people it didn’t identify.
Two unmanned spy planes fired four missiles on a militant training camp, PTV reported. The attack targeted a meeting of tribal elders and killed 40 people, Aaj Television reported earlier.
“Such acts of violence take us away from our objective of elimination of terrorism,” said General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistan army chief of staff, who said the missiles struck “peaceful citizens including elders of the area.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment. “We don’t discuss drones,” he told reporters in Washington.
Pakistan is a main U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaeda- linked militants and the Obama administration is pressing it to cooperate more fully in the war against the militant Islamic Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari’s cooperation with Obama hasn’t been popular with Pakistanis, particularly his tolerance of U.S. drone missile attacks on tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the border.
To contact the reporter on this story: Farhan Sharif in Karachi News at fsharif2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net