Six suspected Taliban were killed on Thursday when a missile apparently fired by a United States drone struck a house in South Waziristan Agency, an official said.The missile hit a house next to a seminary in a village near Azam Warsak in South Waziristan, the senior Pakistani security official told AFP.
Local intelligence officials confirmed the strike, saying the missile destroyed the house and damaged the seminary.
There were no immediate indications that any high-ranking Taliban were killed in the attack, which appeared to be the latest in a series of strikes from unmanned drones against suspected Taliban hideouts in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, AFP reported. The identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, AP reported.
"At present, local Taliban have surrounded the destroyed house, and they are not letting anybody get close to it," said one of the officials. According to Reuters, one of the officials said there might be foreigners among the dead but that he did not know their nationalities.
Washington has stepped up its missile strikes against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in the Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan in recent months, despite protests by Islamabad.
A missile attack late last month by a United States jet reportedly killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot, as well as an Egyptian Al Qaeda operative, security officials have claimed. The strikes have continued despite a warning by Taliban based in the tribal territory last month that any more would lead to reprisal attacks across Pakistan. Washington rarely confirms or denies the attacks. However, the US military has said that the Taliban based on the Pakistan side of the border carry out attacks on American troops in Afghanistan.