US drone kills 15 pro-Taliban Pakistanis in SE Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Sat Sep 12, 2015 10:4AM

An American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has killed 15 pro-Taliban Pakistani militants in southeastern Afghanistan, Press TV reports.

The aircraft launched the attack in the Gomal district of Afghanistan's Paktia province in the country's southeast.

The fatalities belong to the northwestern Pakistan Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan. The bodies of the militants are to be transferred to the Pakistani soil in the near future.

The two neighbors have been trading accusations of not taking adequate measures to stem militancy on each one's respective territory.

Kabul blames elements inside the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for supporting the Taliban militants, while Islamabad blames the Afghan government for giving refuge to militants on its side of the border.

Earlier in the month, however, Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs adviser to Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the governments in Islamabad and Kabul had agreed to end a blame game over a spate of cross-border attacks that have harmed the relationship between the two countries.

"The main thing that we both agreed upon was to restore trust, end the blame game against each other and create a positive atmosphere," Aziz said, adding, "We will work on establishing a memorandum of trust building to avoid such a situation in the future."