A satellite image captured by Google Earth reveals that the United States secretly operates drones from a military base inside Pakistan.
A Google Earth image revealed on Thursday that US forces fly unmanned drones from the Shamsi airbase in the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan.
The image obtained by the The News shows three drones outside a hangar at the end of the airbase runway.
A compound on the other side of the runway appears to have sufficient housing for several dozen personnel.
The base is located about 50 kilometers from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and is located in a way that allows US forces to launch drone attacks within minutes of an order.
Aviation experts, who have been shown the image, have confirmed that the drones appear to be MQ1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles -- the model used by the CIA to observe and strike militants on the Afghan border.
Predator drones have a range of more than 2,000 miles and can fly for 29 hours, enabling them to hit targets in Baluchistan, southern Afghanistan and in the northwestern Pakistani tribal areas.
An investigation by The Times, meanwhile, has revealed that the CIA has been secretly using Shamsi to launch strikes on targets on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.
A spokesman at the US Embassy in Islamabad has declined to comment on the images -- or the Wednesday-released results of the investigation.
The Pakistani military had reportedly allowed the US to use Shamsi, Jacobabad, and two other bases -- Pasni and Dalbadin -- in its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
The then military government, led by Pervez Musharraf, however, contended that the Americans had left the bases in 2006.
Senior officials from both sides have since denied repeatedly that Washington uses Pakistani bases.
US drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and have fuelled anti-American sentiments. The latest drone strike on Monday killed 32 people in the tribal agency of Kurram.
Islamabad has repeatedly called on the US to halt drone attacks on Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
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