Suspected US strike kills seven in Pakistan: officials

A suspected US missile strike killed up to seven alleged Al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday in an extremist stronghold of northwest Pakistan on the Afghan border, security officials said.

At least one vehicle was targeted in the strike in the Makeen area of the semi-autonomous tribal district of South Waziristan, where suspected Afghan and Pakistani Taliban militants are also holed up, local officials said.

Initial reports said no high-value targets were believed to have died.

"A vehicle carrying six foreign militants was targeted in a single missile attack in Makeen area on the border between North and South Waziristan," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani officials use the word "foreigner" in reference to suspected Al-Qaeda fighters, but the precise identities of the dead was not confirmed.

"Two vehicles were hit in the strike, killing seven foreigners, including Uzbeks and Arabs," a tribal security official, Haq Nawaz, told AFP.

Other security officials in the northwest also put the death toll at seven and described the dead as "foreigners".

Taliban quickly sealed off the scene to local residents who came to retrieve the bodies from the wreckage of two vehicles, a witness said.

"I saw the bodies myself. Some of them were completely charred and some were mutilated. I saw raw and bloody pieces of human flesh scattered around the site," one resident told AFP, too frightened to give his name.

More than 35 such strikes have killed over 340 people since August 2008, shortly before key Washington ally President Asif Ali Zardari was elected, fanning hostility against the weak Pakistani government and the United States.

The US military as a rule does not confirm drone attacks but the armed forces and Central Intelligence Agency CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy drones in the region.

Wednesday's attack was the seventh missile strike blamed in Pakistan on unmanned US aircraft since President Barack Obama came to power, dashing Pakistani hopes that his administration would abandon the policy.

Obama has switched the focus of the "war on terror" from Iraq to Afghanistan, where US troops are fighting a Taliban-led insurgency across the border from Pakistan.

Washington is preparing a major new strategy for the region, expected to be announced at an international meeting in the Netherlands on March 31, and US officials believe extremists in Pakistan also pose a grave threat.

The Pakistani government, which Wednesday marked one year in office, has protested to Washington that drone strikes violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the 160 million people of the nuclear-armed nation.

The lawless tribal areas in northwest Pakistan have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels sought refuge in the region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Mountainous and remote, Makeen is a hub of Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's most-wanted militant.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Zardari are to hold talks in Ankara in early April on security issues and efforts to fight Islamist extremists in the region, a Turkish diplomat told AFP.





Egghead : A man poses with the alleged largest egg in the world during a photocall in central London. The egg was laid in the early 17th century, by the now extinct Great Elephant Bird of Madagascarto. AFP/Shaun Curry