A US drone aircraft killed 12 Afghan militants in a missile strike in Pakistan near the house of an Afghan Taliban commander allied to al-Qaeda, intelligence officials said today.
Four missiles hit a house shortly before midnight yesterday in a North Waziristan, about 15km (10 miles) from the Afghan border.
Pakistani security officials initially said three people had been killed but an intelligence agency official said today 12 Afghan militants were killed.
"All those killed were Afghans; men who had come from Logar," a villager said referring to an Afghan province south of the capital, Kabul.
Frustrated by an intensifying Afghan insurgency getting support form bases in lawless northwestern Pakistani border enclaves, the United States stepped up its attacks with pilotless drones last year.
There have been about 57 such strikes since the beginning of 2008 in which about 500 people have been killed, many of them militants, according to a tally of reports from Pakistani security agents and residents.
The former owner of the house stuck in the Thursday night attack year was a relative of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran Afghan militant commander who is also a senior Taliban leader, and who lives near by, a Pakistani security official said.
The owner of the house was killed in Afghanistan last year, he said.
Reuters