WANA, PAKISTAN: Taliban militants claimed to have shot down a US drone in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan on Saturday.
Militants loyal to Taliban commander Maulvi Mohammad Nazir said the unmanned aircraft had crashed in a jungle after the attack and soldiers took away the wreckage.
But security officials and political authorities disputed the Taliban’s claim, saying that teams dispatched to the area after the claim found no wreckage.
Unconfirmed reports also said the drone had gone missing in an area near the Afghan border.
Locals said they had seen a small plane flying over the area at low altitude, adding that militants resorted to heavy firing when they saw it. But they were unaware whether the plane was struck or not.
Residents and a local police official said two drones were flying low over a village in South Waziristan when one of them was hit by militant fire.
‘We heard the firing by the Taliban and then a drone fell down,’ police official Israr Khan said.
A security official said the drone crashed in a forest near a post on the Afghan border. ‘Apparently a drone has crashed in the nearby forest, we are searching for its wreckage,’ he added.
An Army spokesman said reports of a drone crash were being investigated.
‘We have come to know that something has happened there, but we do not have any confirmation,’ Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said in Islamabad.
‘We are further investigating and trying to find out.’
More than two dozen suspected US drone attacks have been carried out in Pakistan since August last year, killing more than 200 people, most of them militants.
Dawn (Pakistan)
