| Chenagai airstrike | |
|---|---|
| Part of War on Terror | |
| Location | Chenagai, Bajaur, Pakistan |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
Attack type | Airstrike |
| Deaths | 70-82[1] |
| Perpetrators | Unknown (Pakistan or United States) |
The Chenagai airstrike took place on October 30, 2006, around 5:00 am local time in the Chenagai village of Bajaur Agency (today Bajaur District) of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA, today Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, KPK) on Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. Both Pakistan and the United States were accused of conducting the attack, however the United States officially denied responsibility for the attack.
Security and terrorism commentator Alexis Debat reported the target of the strike was Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command. Though Zawahiri was not among the dead and was killed in a July 2022 airstrike in Kabul, two to five senior al-Qaeda commanders were present or during or shortly before the attack including Matiur Rehman Ali Muhammad, mastermind of the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, and Faqir Mohammad, a close friend of Zawahiri and deputy leader of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
No official count of casualties was undertaken, local sources claim between 70 and 82 were killed in the attack.[2][3]
And more than once the United States has gotten it wrong -- perhaps most tragically on Oct. 30, 2006, when an errant drone strike obliterated an Islamic boarding school in Chenagai, Pakistan, killing 82 people.
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