Angry residents of a Pakistani village on the Afghan border stopped government officials Thursday from approaching the ruins of a house struck by missiles suspected to have been fired by a US drone. Two missiles, which hit a house in the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal region, where militants have been known to operate, killed eight people including three children and a woman Wednesday evening, residents said. “It's barbaric,” said villager Rehmatullah Khan. “They were innocent people,” he said, referring to the dead. Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Taleban based in Pakistan, said four of those killed were Taleban fighters and all the dead were Pakistani. A security official in the area said between six and eight people were killed and he did not rule out the possibility some of them were foreign militants. There were not believed to be any prominent militants among the dead. The strike was the first since a new Pakistani government was formed about six weeks ago. In January, 2006, a CIA-operated drone Predator aircraft fired missiles at a house in Damadola in the belief Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri was visiting. He was not there and at least 18 people died in the strike, several of them believed to have been Al-Qaeda members. Earlier this year US-controlled Predator aircraft struck at least three sites used by Al-Qaeda operatives in northwest Pakistan, killing dozens of suspected militants. In Wednesday's strike, the house, which residents said belonged to an ethnic Pashtun tribesman, and an adjoining mosque were almost completely destroyed. All that was left standing were badly damaged parts of some walls. Crowds gathered at the scene and a district government official said angry villagers had stopped and turned away his men who had tried to approach. Villagers showed a reporter scraps of metal that they said came from a missile and blood stains.
