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US missile strays to Pak territory

An unexploded cruise missile was found in southwestern Pakistan following the missile strikes on alleged terrorist bases in bordering Afghanistan by the United States on Thursday, reports quoting official sources said.

Peshawar's daily Frontier Post said the missile crashed into the ground near Shinger town, about 200 kilometres from the Raskoh area, where Pakistan conducted nuclear tests last May.

Islamabad's Jang newspaper said civil defence authorities took the missile into possession on Sunday. Observers in Islamabad said they felt the reports would fuel the controversy raging in the country over the US attacks.

Islamabad protested on Friday that a missile hit had killed people on Pakistani territory but retracted the charge within hours, saying it was based on wrong information.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief, who is being accused by Islamic parties of helping the US attack Afghanistan, dismissed the head of the intelligence bureau and the chief secretary of the border province for providing "wrong information."

Both officials claim they had reported Pakistanis being killed by US missiles inside Afghanistan, not on Pakistani territory.

The dismissed secretary, Rustam Shah Mohmand, was quoted by the daily The News as saying that some of the "material of the missiles" fired at the suspected terrorist bases in the Afghan border area of Khowst fell on the Pakistani side.

Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, the sacked intelligence bureau chief, told Jang that he had been made the scapegoat.

Jang also reported that army chief General Jehangir Karamat was with Sharief when the "wrong information" arrived.

General Karamat, meanwhile, is reported to have dispatched the head of the Inter Service Intelligence to investigate who reported that no US missiles fell on Pakistani soil.

UNI

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