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PESHAWAR: A woman was killed and six other members of the same family were injured in a suspected drone strike in Pastawana, a village located in the mountainous terrain of Hassan Khel subdivision, around 50 miles south of Peshawar, late on Tuesday night.
Sources in the area said the suspected strike, which targeted a house, had initially left seven people injured. However, they added that a woman later succumbed to her injuries while being shifted to hospital.
The sources said the victims were immediately shifted to Shamshato Hospital, located on the border between Peshawar and Nowshera districts, where four people with minor injuries were discharged.
“Sher Mast, 70, [the elder of the family] and his 50-year-old son, Munawar, were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital,” one of the sources said.
The source also confirmed that the deceased woman was Munawar’s wife and Sher Mast’s daughter-in-law.
An FIR registered by Munawar with Hassan Khel police stated that he was at home with his family when an unidentified strike targeted their house on Tuesday night. He also refused to allow a postmortem examination of his wife.
A case was registered against unidentified persons under Sections 302 and 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code, Sections 3 and 4 of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Explosive Substances Act, 2013, and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
Pastawana village is located around 40 miles west of Musa Darra, where a militant attack on June 9 martyred six Federal Constabulary (FC) personnel. Eight militants were also killed in the exchange of fire after they attempted to capture the FC post.
The latest suspected strike was the fourth of its kind in the subdivision.
The first took place on Oct 6, 2022, in the Kandao area, then part of the former Frontier Region Peshawar, later declared a part of Hassan Khel subdivision.
According to locals, that strike targeted a militant hideout and killed the brother of then militant commander Abdul Rahim. The Oct 6 drone strike came days after a military convoy had come under attack in the area. Rahim was later killed in an intelligence-based operation on July 10, 2024.
Drone crash
A drone, launched from an unspecified location, crashed in the hilly area of Malagori sub-tehsil in Khyber district on Wednesday.
Police said they were alerted by residents of the Zmako Baro locality in Malagori after the drone crashed in the area shortly after midday.
They said a police team, accompanied by bomb disposal personnel, immediately reached the site and took the crashed drone into custody.
Police said the bomb disposal unit defused the explosives attached to the drone. They added that an investigation was underway to determine where the drone had been launched from.
Ibrahim Shinwari in Khyber also contributed to this report
Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2026
