Karachi, April 24: Thousands of people are expected to gather for a two-day sit-in over U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Ary news television reported Saturday.
Supporters of cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan’s party, Tehrik-e-Insaf, gathered in Attock city, a town 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital Islamabad, to start the campaign against the attacks, which killed more than 900 civilians in 2010.
“The U.S. bombardment on innocent men and women and their casualties in deadly strikes are attacks on our sovereignty”, Khan, who is leading the protest, said while addressing the crowd.
“We will set free this country from U.S. slavery and its stooges,” Khan vowed.
The government has suspended delivery of supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan via land border for three days as protesters blocked the main supply route in the outskirts of Peshawar, according to Ary news.
Party leaders said they expected more than 20,000 people to gather for the protest, while convoys of various civil groups are heading towards the site.
Controversy has surrounded the drone strikes as local residents and officials have blamed them for killing innocent civilians and motivating young men to join the Taliban. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that the U.S. drones strikes were responsible for 957 extra-legal killings in 2010.
The protest comes just a day after U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s volatile tribal region of North Waziristan killed at least 25 suspected militants and injured several others. According to reports, however, among the 25 recovered bodies were three women and five children.
This was the second drone strike in the area since March 17, when more than 40 civilians were killed. Controversy then broke out once again following the air strikes and increased tension within the Pakistan-U.S. alliance.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha has met with CIA Director Leon Panetta in the U.S., reportedly seeking an end to the drone strikes, and last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said diplomatic pressure would continue in order to stop the U.S. drone attacks.
Last Monday, the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly approved a resolution that requested the federal government to summon the U.S. envoy to Pakistan, demanding the U.S. to hand over its drone technology to Pakistan, asserting that drone attacks are against the sovereignty of Pakistan, which would not be tolerated.
Pakistan’s Afghan border is known to be a stronghold of the Taliban’s Haqqani Network, considered one of the top terrorist organizations and threats to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The border region has been targeted by at least 20 U.S. drone attacks this year. Since August 2008, there have been over 250 drone attacks that have reportedly killed more than 1,500 people in north and south Waziristan.
–Agencies–