At least 16 people, including women and children, were killed yesterday in a missile strike by suspected US drones on a Pakistan tribal town near the Afghan border, security officials said.
The drones fired several missiles that hit a house near a madrasah or Islamic seminary in North Waziristan founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden, intelligence officials and Pakistani villagers said.
It was the fourth such strike in the rugged tribal region in almost a week.
“There were two drones and they fired three missiles,” a resident of Dandi Darpakheil said.
A military official said a house and madrasah founded by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani were the targets.
Haqqani is a veteran commander of the US-backed Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, and his links with bin Laden go back to the late 1980s.
He has not been seen since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He is said to be in ill-health and his son, Sirajuddin, has been leading the Haqqani group.
“Haqqani and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan at the time of the attack. They are alive,” said Badruddin, the commander’s third son.
Badruddin said one of his aunts had been killed in the attack on the family home. He said six missiles had struck the house, which the family had owned for 30 years.
“No foreign militant was killed,” a senior intelligence officer speaking on condition of anonymity said, although a junior intelligence official had said earlier that Uzbek and Arab militants had been staying in the school complex.
Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, had been taken to hospital in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, doctors said.
Five of the injured are in critical condition, hospital officials said.
Residents said two pilotless aircraft circled Dande Darpakhel, 3km north of the region’s main town of Miranshah, before at least one drone fired several missiles.
Residents said militants cordoned off the bombed site.
Military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said an “incident” had taken place and its cause was being ascertained.
On Friday, three children and two women were killed in the same region during a suspected strike by a pilotless aircraft.
At least five militants were also killed the day before when a missile fired from an unmanned plane hit a house in the North Waziristan village of Mohammad Khel, officials said.
The latest strike follows Pakistani claims that US-led forces based in Afghanistan killed 15 people in a border village in neighboring South Waziristan district last week.
That attack was condemned by the Pakistani parliament and the foreign minister who issued a statement calling the incident “shameful” and stating that only women and children had been targeted.
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