MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, Oct 10 (AFP): Thousands of Pakistani tribesmen offered funeral prayers Wednesday as they buried 50 people killed in military air strikes after days of heavy clashes near the Afghan border, officials said.
The army said it had only killed pro-Taliban militants in the attacks Tuesday near Mir Ali town in North Waziristan, but residents insisted the dead were civilians and included women and children.
"Around 3,000 tribesmen gathered in Ippi village to offer funeral prayers for some 50 people who died in the air strike," a local official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
At least 250 people, including 47 soldiers, have died in three days of fierce battles in the region, an area identified by US and Pakistani officials as a haunt of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
Thousands of people have fled the region and the army has enforced a curfew in Mir Ali.
Top military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad rejected claims of civilian deaths.
"The strikes were conducted on militant targets and 50 militants were killed," Arshad told AFP, adding that the rebels were using civilian homes to launch attacks on the security forces.
He said the military action was in response to insurgent attacks on army convoys.
The use of warplanes against militants who fled into the region after the fall of Afghanistan's Taliban regime six years ago is rare, with the army usually relying on helicopter gunships.
Residents in Ippi said they were pulling more bodies from the rubble of dozens of homes destroyed in the raids.
The village was the ancestral home of an Islamic firebrand tribal leader, the Fakir of Ippi, who fought British colonial forces and then Pakistani troops before his death in 1960.
Pakistani tribesmen bury dead after air strikes
FE Team | Published: October 11, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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