A U.S. drone has killed two men riding a motorbike in Pakistan's northwest tribal region, officials said.

This is the first such attack in Pakistan under the administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump.

The attack occurred in the Sara Khwa area of the Kurram tribal district that lies along the border with Afghanistan.

A security source told RFE/RL that the two were suspected militants, identified as Qari Abdullah and Qari Shakir. It is not clear which militant group they belonged to.



A second unnamed official confirmed the strike and the casualties.

"The drone came from Afghanistan and returned after firing two missiles on the motorbike," he said.

The previous U.S. drone attack took place in May 2016, killing the leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mansur in southwestern Balochistan province.



Drone strikes are extremely unpopular among many Pakistanis because they are seen as a violation of the country's sovereignty.

However, leaked documents have shown that Pakistan and the United States have secretly colluded over some cases in the past.

With reporting by AP

</s>KURRAM AGENCY: Two persons were killed in a drone strike in an area of Lower Kurram Agency on Thursday, according to officials of the political administration.

The missile struck two men riding a motorcycle in Kurram Agency, part of the country’s lawless tribal areas said to be home to militants from both the Afghan and TTP as well as al Qaeda. It was not clear who was being targeted, the official said. “A drone missile struck the motorcycle which caught fire and then exploded,” said Haji Zamin Hussain a village elder from the area.

Identities of the killed persons have not been revealed yet.

This is the first drone strike under the Trump administration.

According to a local media report, no drone strike had reportedly taken place in Pakistan by the United States until today since May 2016.

The drone strikes by the US under the supervision of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Pakistan began in 2004.</s>ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's government has approved plans to bring the country's semiautonomous tribal areas into the political mainstream -- a move that would end federal rule of the region and extend the jurisdiction of Pakistan's national courts there.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along Pakistan's volatile border with Afghanistan have long been a stronghold for Taliban fighters and Haqqani network militants.

Sartaj Aziz, head of the government's reform committee, said the government in Islamabad had approved the reforms "in principle" on March 2.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told his cabinet the government wants "to bring tribesmen into the national mainstream so that their deprivations can end."

Aziz said FATA would be merged into neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province within five years.

Key reforms would include extending the jurisdiction of Pakistan's national courts, incorporating tribal law enforcement into the national security forces, establishing parliamentary representation for the tribal areas, and ending collective-punishment laws that date from the British colonial era.

For the reforms to take effect, the plan approved by the government on March 2 must now be codified as a draft constitutional amendment that requires approval by two-thirds of the lawmakers in both chambers of Pakistan's bicameral legislature.

There are 104 members of the upper chamber of Pakistan's parliament, the Senate, and 342 lawmakers in the lower chamber, the National Assembly.

In 2016, both chambers of Pakistan's legislature approved a draft version of the plan.

FATA's seven tribal agencies -- Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Mohmand, North Waziristan, South Waziristan, and Orakzai -- are home to about 8 million people, most of them Pashtuns.

The Pashtun tribes that inhabit the region are semiautonomous and had maintained good relations with Islamabad until the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.

FATA was created in the 19th century by British Colonial India authorities.

Since the partition of British Colonial India into two separate states, Pakistan and India, the areas of Pakistan known as FATA have been administered centrally according to a mixture of local tribal traditions -- known as Pashtunwali -- and by civil laws.

Some local tribal leaders have long demanded reform to FATA, saying its status has fueled violence and poverty.

With reporting by Dawn and Geo News</s>PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region on Thursday killed two militants, three intelligence officials said.

The latest strike took place in the Kurram tribal region bordering Afghanistan and the identity and nationality of the slain men were not immediately known, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to media on the record.

Pakistan's military and the CIA's drone strikes have killed thousands of Pakistani and foreign militants in the tribal regions since Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

The drone strike came on the same day that Pakistan's cabinet approved a set of reforms that will bring the tribal regions under government control, an aide to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said. The reforms will be implemented over a five-year period after a merger of the tribal regions with Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, he said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to disclose the information before it was released officially.

Also on Thursday, Pakistani police shot and killed a vendor they suspected of being a suicide bomber in the northwestern city of Mardan, a police officer Mumtaz Khan said. The vendor was riding a bicycle and didn't stop at a checkpoint outside a courthouse, he said.

Khan said the police first rammed a vehicle into the bicycle when the vendor didn't listen to warning shouts and shot him when he tried to run away.

The man died later and no explosives or weapons were found, he said.

"I don't understand why the vendor would keep going (even though) we were giving him loud warnings," said another officer, Zeb Bakhtiar, who was at the checkpoint.

Pakistani police have been on high alert after a recent string of suicide bombings that have killed more than 125 people, the latest of them inside a court building in another northwestern city. Pakistani Taliban-linked militants and the Islamic State group have claimed the brazen attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban, their allied local militant groups and al-Qaida-linked foreign militants have been operating from the country's lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border. The rough terrain consists of long swathes of land that has historically been ruled by a set of local tribal laws, effectively denying access to the Pakistani police and judicial system there.

Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.</s>A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region on Thursday killed two militants, three intelligence officials said. The latest strike took place in the Kurram tribal region bordering Afghanistan and the identity and nationality of the slain men were not immediately known, said the officials.

Start the conversation, or Read more at The Tribune.</s>KURRAM AGENCY, Pakistan, March 2 (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed two men on Thursday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, a local government official and a village elder said.

U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan have become rare over the past few years and the latest strike, if confirmed, would be the first such attack inside the nuclear-armed nation since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.

The missile struck two men riding a motorcycle in Pakistan's northern Kurram Agency, part of the country's lawless tribal areas said to be home to militants from both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as well as al Qaeda.

It was not clear who was being targeted, the official said.

"A drone missile struck the motorcycle which caught fire and then exploded," said village elder Haji Zamin Hussain.

Pakistan's foreign office spokesman could not be reached for comment.

In its last high-profile drone attack inside Pakistan, the United States in May killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan. (Reporting by Javed Hussain, Writing by Saad Sayeed; editing by Drazen Jorgic)</s>PESHAWAR - A US drone on Thursday killed two men riding a motorbike in Kurram Agency, officials said, the first such attack in the country under the administration of new American President Donald Trump.

The attack occurred in the Sara Khwa area of Kurram Agency. Requesting anonymity, a local government official described the two men who were killed as "militants" but said their identity could not immediately be confirmed.

A second official confirmed the strike and the casualties. "The drone came from Afghanistan and returned after firing two missiles on the motorbike," he said.

A senior Afghan Taliban commander told AFP on condition of anonymity that one of those killed in the attack was Qari Abdullah, a guard in the Haqqani network while the second, Saqib Ullah, was a commander of the group. Haqqani is separate from but allied with the Taliban.

According to Reuters, a Pakistani government official identified one of the men killed as Qari Abdullah Subari, a senior commander from the Afghan Taliban.

A Pakistani intelligence source said the other man was also a Taliban member named Shakir.

The last US drone attack took place in May 2016, killing the then leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mansour as well as his driver in Balochistan.

The very first of the more than 420 attacks occurred in 2004 under the government of President George W Bush, but it was under President Barack Obama that their use increased substantially, before tapering off in his second term. Last year there were only three. Drones have proven extremely controversial with the Pakistani public and rights groups. In 2013, Amnesty International said the US could be guilty of war crimes by carrying out extrajudicial killings.

The strike could be read as the first hint about President Trump's policy toward Pakistan, a country he has spoken about relatively little.

In December Pakistan's foreign office said then president-elect Trump praised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as a "terrific guy" and offered support for a "fantastic" country, in an effusive phone call that baffled many.

Trump's aides confirmed the call but gave a more toned-down account, saying the pair had a "productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future."</s>In the latest drone strike by the US, two suspected militants have been killed in Pakistan, reported Waqt News.

According to details, the drone targeted two reported terrorists going on a motorbike in Ahmadi Shama area of Lower Kurram Agency.

There are no updates regarding the identification of those killed from Pakistan or the US government yet.

The US has used drones to target militants in Pakistan after a while. The last drone strike was conducted on May 21, 2016 in which Afghan Taliban Leader Mullah Masnoor Akhtar was killed at Nushki, Balochistan.

Chat Con</s>Peshawar, Mar 2 : At least two suspected militants were killed today in a US drone strike in Pakistan's restive northwest tribal region, the first such attack after Donald Trump assumed Presidency. The CIA-operated drone fired a missile that killed two suspected militants on the spot in a village in Kurram Agency, near the Afghanistan border, a local government official said.

Start the conversation, or Read more at India.com.</s>The official said the strike took place at dawn on Saturday on a road to the north of Jaar in Abyan Governorate, near Aden. He did not say who was behind the strike, but previous drone strikes have been carried out by the United States.

Washington does not usually comment on drone strikes.

Yemen is home to an al Qaeda wing that has planned to attack international airliners and was once described by Washington as the movement's most dangerous branch. Impoverished and turbulent, Yemen is located next door to the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and major crude shipment routes.

The United States has stepped up attacks on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Yemeni officials said at least six suspected militants were killed in two drone strikes last month. Another six suspected al Qaeda members were killed in January.

Militants allied to AQAP took advantage of Arab Spring chaos in Yemen in early 2011 to seize control of some towns in the country's southern provinces, including Jaar. Although they were pushed from the towns last year they continue to fight government forces.
A United States drone strike kills two alleged militants in the Kurram district of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.