83 Taliban Killed By Obama's Cairo Speech and Rentlentless Predator Strikes, But Mostly Relentless Predator Strikes

The first strike took out Six Taliban. Then the Predators came back to attack the funeral of a leader they'd just killed, and took out 65.

Revised to 83.

The attack took place in the Ladha region as scores of Taliban leaders and fighters were attending the funeral of Khwaz Ali Mehsud, a mid-level commander in Baitullah's network. The initial attack on the funeral procession was followed up with strikes on Taliban vehicles as they attempted to flee the attack site.

Khwaz was killed in a Predator airstrike in Makeen earlier that morning. The attack killed five other low-level Taliban fighters.

Khwaz was "beloved" by Baitullah, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. The News described Khwaz as one of Baitullah's "close and trusted commanders." Senior Taliban leaders were expected to attend Khwaz's funeral to pay their respects.

If anyone can find this video, please let me know. I thought I saw it on FoxNews, but I don't see any clips on YouTube.

Here's undated but recent video of Marines fighting the Taliban in Helmand.

Correction: FoxNews didn't have footage of the Predator attack. What they had was Apache footage of a separate action, the Apache (and US ground troops) engaging 15 armed Taliban, killing them all, suffering no casualties.

That video doesn't seem available yet.

posted by Ace at 12:00 PM

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