Four suspected U.S. missiles slammed into a house in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing six people in an area near the Afghan border teeming with local and foreign militants, intelligence officials said.
The strike, carried out by at least one unmanned aircraft, was part of the Obama administration's intensified campaign to use drones to target militants who regularly stage cross-border attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan.
The house destroyed in the strike was located in Khaddi village in North Waziristan, part of the semiautonomous tribal region in Pakistan that is almost entirely controlled by militants, said the intelligence officials.
The dead included three militants and three local tribesmen who were harboring them, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The U.S. has carried out more than 100 drone strikes in Pakistan this year, roughly twice the number in 2009. The U.S. refuses publicly to acknowledge the covert CIA attacks, but officials have said privately that they have killed several senior al-Qaida and Taliban commanders over the years.
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TVNL Comment: What are 'suspected' US drones? What other nation is killing Pakistanis using drones? Just asking...especially after 20 other Pakistanis were killed by a drone two days ago.
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