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Pakistanis protest deadly CIA missile attack
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-15 22:15

Chanting "Death to America," Islamic groups held nationwide protests Sunday as anger mounted over a purported CIA airstrike that Pakistan says killed innocent civilians instead of the apparent target — al-Qaida's No. 2 leader.

Meanwhile, a newspaper reported that the mission was launched on intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahri had been invited to dinner that night in one of three houses leveled by the attack on Damadola, a village near the Afghan border.


Angry protesters chant anti-U.S. slogans during a protest in Islamabad, Pakistan on Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006. [AP]

Islamabad — which insists it does not allow the 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt for Taliban or al-Qaida fighters — has condemned the strike. The Pakistanis have shown increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected U.S. attacks along the frontier aimed at Islamic militants.

Pakistani officials say innocent people were among the 17 men, women and children killed in Friday's attack and al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, was not even there.

Survivors in Damadola, an ethnic Pashtun hamlet about four miles from the border with Afghanistan, also denied militants were there, but some news reports quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.

A senior intelligence official said Sunday that 12 bodies had been taken away, including seven foreigners.

He said the bodies were reclaimed by other militants, but another Pakistani official told The Associated Press on Saturday that some were taken away for DNA tests. A law enforcement official in Washington said the FBI expected to conduct the tests to determine victims' identities, although Pakistan had not yet formally requested them.

The claims by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, could not be independently verified.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington declined to comment on U.S. media reports that a CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles Friday at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit al-Zawahri, whose videos have made him the face and voice of al-Qaida.

A large number of al-Qaida and Taliban combatants, including al-Zawahri and bin Laden, are believed to have sought refuge along the rugged, porous and ill-defined border.

Some 10,000 people rallied in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, chanting "Death to America" and "Stop bombing against innocent people." Hundreds of police carrying batons and shields were deployed, but the rally ended after an hour with no violence reported.

Hundreds more rallied in the capital, Islamabad, and in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar and elsewhere, burning American flags and demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

In Pakistan's strongest reaction, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Saturday called the attack "highly condemnable" and said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it protested to U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker over the "loss of innocent civilian lives."

Neither addressed the target of the airstrike. But two senior Pakistani security officials confirmed to AP that al-Zawahri was the intended victim and said Pakistan's assessment was that the CIA acted on incorrect information.
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