Military: No US drone strike in PH in 2006

MANILA, Philippines – The military on Monday denied that the United States conducted a drone strike in 2006 in an attempt to kill Indonesian terrorist Omar Patek.

“That’s against the law, the US does not participate in (actual) military operations here in the Philippines,” military spokesman Colonel Arnulfo Marcelo Burgos Jr. said.

In the story of Mark Mazzeti title “The Drone Zone,”  which appeared on the Sunday magazine of the New York Times, it reported that a predator drone fired a “barrage of Hellfire missiles,” in the jungle of the Philippines” to kill Patek.

“They only do sharing of information, training but other than that none,” Burgos said.

Meanwhile, in an interview with reporters, then military chief retired General Hermogenes Esperon Jr., also denied the drone attacks, but  said surveillance was conducted at that time.

“We deployed surveillance aircrafts but not the predator drone,” he said in a phone interview.

He added that he did not know of any air strikes conducted by the United States in 2006.

Although US troops worked with Philippine military in 2006 through Joint Special Task Group in Jolo, Esperon said that they only performed non-combatant roles. Frances Mangosing