DERA ISMAIL KHAN - A suspected US drone strike killed several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, one militant commander and intelligence sources said on Thursday, in a rare strike on Pakistani soil.
If confirmed, the air strike, which happened on Wednesday, would only be the second drone attack inside the nuclear-armed nation since US President Donald Trump took office in January.
Abdullah Wazirstani, spokesman for North Waziristan Taliban, a group linked to the Pakistani Taliban, said the strike killed three civilian “labourers” and seven militants from the Pakistani Taliban, which is also known as TTP.
Malik Waheedullah, a local tribal leader, told Reuters he saw two missiles strike a mountain home which caught fire. “I drove away as fast as I could,” he said.
One Pakistani intelligence official and government source said they believed the strike to be a US drone attack. US officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The suspected strike happened in the Lawara Mandi area of North Waziristan.
“We have received reports of a drone attack in North Waziristan in which some seven militants have been killed,” a security official told AFP.
Local intelligence officials said drones were seen in the area before two missiles hit a house in Lawara Mandi area, believed to be used by the umbrella Taliban militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
“There are two militant commanders, Abdul Rehman and Akhtar Mohammad among the dead,” an intelligence official told AFP requesting anonymity.
Officials said the missiles could have been fired by US drones, but declined to confirm the origin of the strike.
The previous US strike under the Trump government killed two men riding a motorbike in Kurram Agency in March.
The US has rattled the international community with its recent military moves, including the decision to drop its largest non-nuclear weapon on hideouts of the Islamic State group in eastern Afghanistan in early April.
US National Security Adviser Lt-General HR McMaster made a visit to Pakistan this month after suggesting Washington may take a stronger line with Islamabad, for years seen as an unreliable US ally.
US-led NATO troops have been at war in Afghanistan since 2001, after the ousting of the Taliban regime for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
The first of the more than 420 drone attacks in Pakistan occurred in 2004 under the government of President George W Bush, but it was under President Barack Obama that their use increased substantially, before tapering off in his second term.
Last year there were only three, including the May 2016 drone strike that killed the then leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Balochistan.
In 2013, Amnesty International said the US could be guilty of war crimes by carrying out extrajudicial killings.
Pakistan has also targeted militants with domestic armed drone systems, developed two years ago, but it rarely uses them to strike Taliban groups.