US drone strike kills eight in Pakistan: officials
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — The strike took place in the district of Mir Ali, northeast of Miranshah, the main town of the restive North Waziristan tribal district, officials said.
"At least eight people were killed in the drone attack. A compound used by militants was targeted," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Another security official described the target as a Taliban training centre in Palooseen village. There were foreigners among the dead, the official said, using a term employed widely in Pakistan to mean Al-Qaeda operatives.
North Waziristan neighbours South Waziristan, where Pakistan has been pressing its most ambitious offensive to date against homegrown Taliban militants since October 17, sending troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships into battle.
Northwest Pakistan has seen a surge in the US strikes, which fan anti-Americanism in the nuclear-armed Muslim country, since President Barack Obama took office and put the country on the frontline of the war on Al-Qaeda.
Obama has reportedly increased pressure on Islamabad to fight not just Tehreek-e-Taliban, which launches attacks within Pakistan, but those using Pakistan as a base from which to fight the Kabul government and Western troops in Afghanistan.
Another US drone attack killed six militants, including three foreigners, in North Waziristan overnight Wednesday to Thursday, Pakistani officials said.
A foreign "terrorist" named Salah al-Somali was the target, but there was no confirmation on whether he died or not, Pakistani military officials said.
The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, which US officials say have killed a number of top-level militants but Islamabad publicly opposes as a violation of its sovereignty.
Criticism of the strikes has lessened somewhat in public since a US drone attack killed Pakistan's much feared Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud on August 5 and analysts say Islamabad gives its tacit support to the strikes.
Since August 2008, at least 65 such strikes have killed around 625 people, although it is difficult to confirm the precise identity of many of those who die given that the remote region is largely closed to outsiders.
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Pakistani officials said that a suspected US drone attack has killed at least eight people today, including foreign militants, in the country's northwest.

The officials said that two missiles were fired at a compound being used by suspected Taliban militants in Mir Ali village, in North Waziristan, a region on the Afghanistan-border that is said to be a militant stronghold.


"At least eight people were killed in the drone attack. A compound used by militants was targeted," said an unnamed official to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

Police official Mohammad Haroon said to the Reuters news agency that "it was a remote-controlled bomb. Two policemen died on the spot, while a third has succumbed to his injuries a short while ago."

US military officials generally do not confirm attacks such as these, but its armed forces and Central Intelligence Agency employees in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

At least 65 similar drone strikes have killed about 625 people in Pakistan since August of last year, according to AFP.