Missed?

According to the Washington Post the U.S. air strikes in Pakistan intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri missed.

Local authorities denied that any foreigners had been present in the area.

"We can say with full authority that those who were killed were all innocent permanent residents of the village Damadola," said Sirajul Haq, senior minister of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province. "Any independent probe would confirm that no foreigner was in the vicinity of the neighborhood targeted by the U.S. missiles."

While the New York Times reported that thousands of Pakistanis protested the strikes, they also said that the strikes were not entirely unsuccessful.

Local officials in the Bajaur district, where the airstrike happened, said 18 civilians had been killed in the attack, including six children. But the senior Pakistani official who spoke of Mr. Zawahiri suggested that the death toll was higher, and he said that at least 11 militants had been killed in the attack. Seven of the dead were Arab fighters, and another four were Pakistani militants from Punjab Province, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media...

On Saturday, the Pakistani security official described some of the intelligence surrounding the airstrike. He said that a dinner at which Mr. Zawahiri was expected had been planned for Thursday night. A local cleric, Maulavi Liaqat, was at the dinner, but he left around midnight, the official said.

After the airstrike, Mr. Liaqat was again at the scene, and he had the bodies of the Arab militants pulled from the rubble and taken away, the security official said. A second cleric, Maulavi Atta Muhammad, took away the Pakistani militants, he said.

A second American official who acknowledged that Mr. Zawahiri had been the target of the strike said it was probably too soon to know for certain whether he had been at the scene.