Suspected US strike kills at least 10 in South Waziristan

PESHAWAR: A US drone fired missiles into a suspected militant camp in a Taliban stronghold of northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, killing at least 10 people on Tuesday, security officials said.

The attack happened near the small mountain town of Kanniguram in South Waziristan — a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

Kanniguram is seven kilometres south of Ladha, the village where a suspected US drone fired two missiles into the house of Mehsud's father-in-law last Wednesday.

‘Two missiles were fired by a US drone. It was a militant compound,’ a Pakistani government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

‘We have reports that more than 10 people were killed in the attack. It was a drone attack,’ one Pakistani military official told AFP.

Another senior security official confirmed that 10 suspected militants were killed, but a local government official had no exact death toll.

Meanwhile, Hamdullah Mehsud, a resident, said three missiles hit the large high-walled house.

‘So far, eight bodies have been pulled out of the rubble,’ he told Reuters. Five people were wounded, he added.

It was the first suspected US attack since last Wednesday, in a strike that Pakistani and US officials believe killed Baitullah Mehsud and his wife in South Waziristan.

But confusion has reigned and both governments have stopped short of confirming that the warlord — Pakistan's public enemy number one — is dead.

The United States military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy unmanned aircraft in the region.

Pakistan has in the past vociferously opposed drone attacks as a threat to its sovereignty, which risk whipping up a spiralling anti-American backlash that could destabilise the weak civilian government.