Anger, blood, at scene of missile hit in Pakistan

DAMADOLA, Pakistan - Angry residents of a Pakistani village on the Afghan border stopped government officials on 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 Islamist militants have been known to operate, killed eight people including three children and a woman on 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 militants 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 bin Laden's deputy, 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 U.S.-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.
‘They don't want peace’
A Pakistani military spokesman said there had been a blast but the military had not determined what caused it. A government spokesman said he had no information.
Neither US nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which would be an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty and unpopular with many Pakistanis who oppose the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.
Allies of staunch US ally President Pervez Musharraf were defeated in a February election and the new government has begun negotiating with the aim of getting Pakistani militants to end a wave of attacks.
Taleban spokesman Omar said the US missile strike was aimed at scuppering the peace talks with the government.
‘They don't want peace in Pakistan and that's why they are doing it but we'll continue the talks,’ Omar said.
Pakistan's Western allies say previous peace pacts have merely gave the militants a free hand to regroup and plot violence in Afghanistan and beyond.
The Washington Post reported in March that the United States had escalated air strikes against Al Qaeda fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas fearing that support from Islamabad may slip away as Musharraf's power ebbed.
Many Al Qaeda members, including Uzbeks and Arabs, and Taleban militants took refuge in North and South Waziristan, as well as in other areas on the Pakistani side of the border after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001.
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the border.