US to wage war against terrorists targetting American soldiers

The US has told Pakistan that while it respects its territorial integrity, it will continue to conduct strikes to eliminate terrorists who target American soldiers, a day after Islamabad summoned the US ambassador to express concern over the drone strike in Pakistan that killed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

Mansour was engaged in “specific actions, specific things ...in real time” that posed “specific, imminent threats” to US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman Capt Jeff Davis said. “This was a defensive strike against an individual who was actively engaged in planning and conducting operation that were targeting US and Coalition personnel,” Davis said during a press conference on Monday. While the US has been conducting similar defensive strike inside Afghanistan, this is probably for the first time that the US did a “defensive strike” after the killing of Osama bin Laden. 

The strike targetting the Afghan Taliban supremo deep inside Pakistan was carried out on May 21 by multiple unmanned drones operated by US Special Operations forces while Mansour was travelling in a vehicle in a remote area in the restive Balochistan close to the Afghan border while apparently returning from Iran.