The pre-dawn helicopter-borne ground assault on the village of Angor Adda on the Afghan border on Wednesday was the first known incursion into Pakistan by US-led troops since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Twenty people, including women and children were killed, officials said, and a new civilian government, more sensitive to public anger than the previous government, summoned the US ambassador to lodge an angry protest.On Thursday, four militants were killed and five wounded in a missile attack by a suspected US drone in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, security officials and witnesses said. The attack targetted the house of a tribesman, Rehman Wali, in the Mohammad Khel area, near the border with Afghanistan, where the militants were hiding. "Apparently three missiles were fired by the drone," a witness in the area told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Foreign Minister Shah Memood Qureshi said the Wednesday's raid was a shameful violation of rules of engagement agreed with US-led forces in Afghanistan.
"We will not compromise on any violation of our sovereignty," Qureshi told the National Assembly.
"We will defend and ... we have a resolve and we have national consensus in Pakistan to defend our territorial integrity," he said. Both houses of parliament later adopted resolutions condemning the attack.
The United States, a major source of aid to nuclear-armed Pakistan, has not officially commented on the raid but there is little, if any, doubt it was carried out by US troops.
The United States says al-Qaeda and Taliban militants lurk in sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border, where they orchestrate attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot violence in the West. Pakistan has been a close US ally in the unpopular campaign against terrorism and has tens of thousands of troops battling militants but it rules out incursions by foreign troops.
There have, however, been numerous missile strikes on militants in Pakistan, most believed launched by US-operated pilotless drone aircraft. NATO's Afghan peacekeeping force, led by a US general, denied involvement. The United States leads a separate, counter-insurgency force in Afghanistan.
