Missile attack kills 16 in Pakistan border town

At least 16 people including women and children were killed today in a missile strike by suspected US drones on a Pakistan tribal town near the Afghan border, officials said. The unmanned aircraft fired several missiles that hit a house near a madrassa in North Waziristan, the officials said, in the fourth such strike in the rugged tribal region in almost a week. "There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, a village in the North Waziristan.

Women and children were among the dead, as well as the militants. "The dead included three women, two children and two men," a security official also said, adding that more than 25 people had been wounded. Some of the injured are in critical condition, hospital officials said. The drones were apparently targeting the house or the madrassa established by the former Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani during the 1978-88 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, residents said.

Haqqani, who was a close aid to the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, has not been seen since the fall of the hardline regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Residents said two pilotless aircraft circled over Dande Darpakhel, three kilometres north of the region's main town of Miranshah, before at least one drone fired several missiles. On Friday, three children and two women were killed in the same region during a suspected strike by a pilotless aircraft.

At least five militants were also killed the day before when a missile fired from an unmanned plane hit a house in the North Waziristan village of Mohammad Khel, officials said. The latest strike follows Pakistani claims that US-led forces based in Afghanistan killed 15 people in a border village in neighbouring South Waziristan district last week. That attack was condemned by Pakistan's parliament and the foreign minister who issued a tough statement calling the incident "shameful" and stating that only women and children had been targeted.

Missile strikes targeting militants in Pakistan in recent weeks have been blamed on US-led coalition forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan. Pakistan does not have missile-equipped drones. US and Afghan officials say Pakistan's tribal areas are a safe haven for Al Qa'eda and Taliban militants who sneaked into the rugged terrain after the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. *AFP