Small drone crashes near Pak-Afghan border
621 viewsBy jazbablog - Thu Aug 25, 10:04 pm
QUETTA: A US small drone plane crashed in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday near a paramilitary base close to the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.
“It was an American surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle. It crashed on this side of the border,” a security official in the area said.
He said the drone had come down apparently due to a technical fault, some 2-km inside Pakistani territory in Chaman town in insurgency-hit Baluchistan province, but had caused no damage.
The official, who while talking to a foreign news agency said the wreckage of the aircraft had been recovered.
An official from Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in Quetta, the province’s main town, confirmed the incident. “Some spare parts and a camera were also found with it,” that official said. “It crashed near a Frontier Corps fort in Chaman but caused no damage.”
Such crashes of US aircraft are rare in Pakistan but one of the country’s own surveillance drones crashed in the city of Karachi in July after hitting a bird on a routine flight.
The United States uses unmanned aircraft in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and to monitor militants in Pakistan, from where Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked fighters launch attacks in Afghanistan.
It also uses Predator armed drones to launch missile attacks aimed at militants in the country’s northwestern border areas.
The campaign is deeply unpopular among an anti-American public and the government has publicly demanded an end to the attacks, although in private military and civilian leaders are thought to co-operate with the programme, reported the news agency further.
