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Killing of Germans signals US shifting war to 'rogue' Pak?

WASHINGTON: Several German jihadis of Muslim origin were reportedly dispatched to the drones club by CIA-operated Predator aircraft on Monday as the Obama administration decisively shifted the war on terror to Pakistan, a country some US analysts are now saying has "gone rogue." Amid a growing disquiet and suspicion in Washington DC about Islamabad's bona fides in the war on terror , US drones continued their barrage of attack against terrorist targets inside Pakistan with another strike on Monday that is said to have killed five to eight jihadis. Some reports said five of dead were Germans of Turkish origin and three were local militants. It was not immediately clear if they were the same jihadis who were reported to have been training in Pakistan's North Wazirstan region for a Mumbai-style terror strike in Europe, American intelligence reports about which had resulted in a massive security alert over the weekend. German authorities had spoken about up to a dozen radical Muslim youth from Hamburg having gone to Pakistans lawless Waziristan region to train for a terror strike. The plot was uncovered after authorities in Afghanistan apprehended one of the trainees named Ahmed Siddiqi and he spilled the beans during interrogation. Washington and Islamabad are in the throes of suspicion and mistrust arising from an incident where Nato choppers attacked a Pakistani security post on the Afghan border killing three Pakistani soldiers. Western military spokesmen said the choppers attacked the post after it provided covering fire to militants fleeing into Pakistan as they (Nato forces) were in hot pursuit. But Pakistan has retaliated by shutting down a supply route that the US uses for its operations in Afghanistan, a blockade that is now in its sixth day. Pakistani officials have suggested the blockade is linked to public anger and it will be lifted once things cool off, even as a joint Nato-Pakistan inquiry is underway into the incident. But meantime, there have been multiple attacks on U.S military supply convoys that Islamabad has blamed on the Taliban but which Washington suspects is being instigated by its ally. The spat, and the pronouncements made by military men like Musharraf, has led some analysts to suggest that Pakistan, ruled de facto by its Army, may have gone rogue under a civilian cover. Germany probes drone deaths Germany said it had no information on five German Islamists who according to Pakistani security sources were killed in a US drone attack in the country's lawless tribal belt. "Currently we have no information but we are investigating ," a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry in Berlin said. Germany, which opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, has more than 4,750 troops in Afghanistan under Nato command.

                                                                                                               
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