The drone crashed in South Waziristan, part of the lawless tribal belt that Washington calls a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda, the officials told AFP. - File photo
MIRANSHAH: An unmanned US drone crashed in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal district on Sunday, Pakistan security officials said.
Tehreek-e-Taliban have claimed responsibility for the crash and said the US drone was shot down, DawnNews reported. Meanwhile security officials claimed that the drone had crashed due to technical difficulties.
The drone crashed in South Waziristan, part of the lawless tribal belt that Washington calls a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda, the officials told AFP.
“The American drone crashed in Zangara village of South Waziristan, apparently because of some technical faults,” a security official in Peshawar said.
Zangara is 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan.
Two intelligence officials in Wana confirmed the incident. It was an armed Predator drone, they said.
The United States uses unmanned surveillance aircraft in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan to monitor militants in Pakistan, from where Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked fighters launch attacks in Afghanistan.
It also uses Predator armed drones to launch missile attacks aimed at militants in Pakistan’s unstable northwestern border areas.
US drone crashes are very rare in Pakistan, but a surveillance drone equipped with a camera crashed in southwestern Pakistan on August 25.
In September 2008, tribesmen in South Waziristan claimed to have shot down another surveillance drone in Jalal village, near the Afghan border.
The Pakistani army said at the time that it was investigating that incident but did not make the results of the probe public.
The US drone campaign is deeply unpopular among an anti-American Pakistani public and the government has publicly demanded an end to the attacks.
However, in private, Pakistani military and civilian leaders are thought to co-operate with the programme and Washington says it has been successful in eliminating a number of Al-Qaeda- and Taliban-linked militants in Pakistan.
Around two dozen drone strikes have been reported in Pakistan since elite US forces killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a suburban home near Pakistan’s main military academy in Abbottabad, close to the capital, on May 2.
The raid humiliated Pakistan and prompted allegations of incompetence and complicity in sheltering bin Laden.
Pakistan is seen as a key ally for the United States in its fight against militancy, but relations soured after the bin Laden raid, which both countries say was carried out without Islamabad being warned.
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