An American drone strike killed three suspected militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt on Sunday, an official said, in the first such attack since the country’s Parliament demanded an end to those missions just over two weeks ago.
The remotely piloted aircraft struck an abandoned school building in the densely populated central bazaar of Miram Shah, the capital of the North Waziristan tribal agency, killing three people and wounding two, a government official and a local resident said.
The militants were believed to be Punjabi Taliban fighters with the Haqqani network, which carried out a series of attacks in Kabul and two other Afghan cities on April 15. The school building that was struck on Sunday was thought to be a base of operations for militants, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
In Washington, a senior official confirmed the strike, describing the compound as a “staging and planning area for Al Qaeda, the Haqqanis and other terrorists.” He said the militants based there “were preparing explosives for use in attacks inside Afghanistan,” similar to the April 15 attacks.
The C.I.A. strike underlined the tensions between American diplomatic and security priorities in Pakistan. Officials from the two countries are trying to reset relations that stalled badly after American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghanistan border in November.
Last week, President Obama sent his regional representative, Marc Grossman, to Islamabad for two days of high-level talks that aimed to reach agreement on a variety of contentious issues, including drone strikes, the reopening of NATO supply lines and the clearing of at least $1 billion in American military aid that is overdue.
The agenda for the talks was framed by a strongly worded resolution passed by Pakistan’s Parliament on April 12 that contained a list of demands, including an end to drone attacks and an unconditional apology for the killings in November.
Yet while Obama administration officials say they are ready to negotiate on many issues, they are unwilling to stop the drones and are angered by the continued use of Pakistani territory by Taliban insurgents and their allies.
Administration officials were particularly riled by intelligence reports indicating that the April 15 attacks were coordinated by Haqqani leaders in North Waziristan — a fact that swung the internal argument against fully apologizing to the Pakistanis for the November killings, senior officials say.
Last week in Islamabad, American negotiators told their Pakistani counterparts they had located Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, in Miram Shah during the assault, a senior Pakistani official said.
Pakistan’s military vigorously denies it is soft-pedaling the fight against the Haqqanis. Generals say their forces, now thought to involve about 150,000 regular and paramilitary troops in the northwest region, are stretched by combat in other parts of the tribal belt.
“We have already shifted huge numbers of troops off the eastern border. We can’t do any more,” a senior Pakistani security official said.
Diplomats from both countries insist that their talks are starting to make progress in some areas, like the reopening of NATO supply lines, the dispute about overdue military aid — variously estimated between $1.18 billion and $3 billion — and the nudging of the Afghan Taliban toward peace talks.
Yet the drone strike on Sunday in Miram Shah indicated that the C.I.A. would press ahead with its operations.
The drone fired two missiles at the abandoned girls’ school, which had been occupied by militants since they bombed it four years ago, said a local resident, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
North Waziristan is also a hub for the Pakistani Taliban, a force that is related to but separate from the Afghan Taliban. That group’s reputation for ruthlessness was underscored on Sunday when the body of a beheaded British aid worker was found in an orchard in the western city of Quetta.
The worker, Khalil Dale, 60, a manager for the International Committee of the Red Cross who had worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, was kidnapped close to his office in Quetta last January. A note accompanying the body, signed by the Taliban, said he had been killed because the Red Cross refused to pay ransom for his release.
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