DERA ISMAIL KHAN - Missiles from a suspected U.S. drone aircraft struck a house and seminary linked to a key Taliban commander yesterday, killing at least nine people, officials and witnesses said.
The explosions occurred in a village in North Waziristan, a militant stronghold in Pakistan’s northwestern wild tribal belt and a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job, said three suspected foreign militants and two children were among the dead in what appeared to be part of a stepped-up U.S. campaign against militant havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The targets were linked to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s who American commanders count among their most dangerous foes.
Haqqani and his son, Siraj, have been linked to attacks this year including an attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a bold attack on a luxury hotel in Kabul. Haqqani network operatives plague U.S. forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province with ambushes and roadside bombs.
Reports varied on casualties in yesterday’s attack in northwestern Pakistan. The intelligence official said 12 people died — three suspected foreign militants, two local men, four women and three children—— when several missiles hit the seminary and adjacent houses in the village of Dande Darba Khel.
Another 15 people — mostly women and children — were injured, he said, citing informers.
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