A US drone fired four missiles into a compound used by Islamist fighters in Pakistan's north-western tribal belt on Saturday, killing at least 12 militants, security officials said.
The missiles targeted the compound in Dwasarak village, about 40km west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan district, a senior Pakistani security official who wished to remain anonymous said.
"At least 12 militants have been killed in this attack," he said adding that two US drones fired four missiles.
Two intelligence officials, one in Wana and one based in Peshawar, also confirmed the attack and the death toll.
South Waziristan, considered a militant stronghold, was the scene of a major Pakistani offensive last year.
Dwasarak is close to the Afghan border in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan. Officials said militants belonging to local commander Maulana Halimullah were killed in the attack, the second time that US drones have targeted his men.
A security official in Miranshah, the main town of the neighbouring North Waziristan tribal district said militants were also using the compound as a training camp.
Soon after the attack, militants surrounded the village and forced residents to stay in their houses, another security official in Wana said.
It was not immediately clear whether there were any high-value targets among the dead, the official said.
On June 29, a compound belonging to Halimullah in Karikot, a village about 10 kilometres southwest of Wana, was destroyed in a drone attack that killed six militants.
More recently, at least 10 militants were killed in a drone strike on July 15 in neighbouring North Waziristan district.
Washington has branded the rugged tribal area on the Afghan border a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on earth.
Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in more than 100 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, including a number of senior militants. However the attacks fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.
The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.
Militants based in the rugged tribal terrain attack US-led forces across the border in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Taliban are waging a nearly nine-year insurgency to evict the more than 140,000 foreign troops.
On June 1, Al-Qaeda said its number three leader and Osama bin Laden's one-time treasurer Mustafa Abu al-Yazid was killed in what security officials said was an apparent drone strike in North Waziristan.
Waziristan came under renewed scrutiny when Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged over an attempted bombing in New York on May 1, allegedly told US interrogators he went there for bomb training.
The United States has been increasing pressure on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist havens along the Afghan border.
Pakistani commanders have not ruled out an offensive in North Waziristan, but argue that gains in South Waziristan and the northwestern district of Swat need to be consolidated to prevent their troops from being stretched too thin.
In two separate incidents, suspected militants armed with guns and grenades attacked two police stations early Saturday in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, killing a policeman and wounding four others, police said.
"One policeman was killed and four injured in these separate attacks," Rao Sardar, a senior police officer in Lahore told AFP by telephone.
Police said an unknown number of suspected militants attacked Gulshan Ravi and Lytton police stations with hand grenades and assault rifles before fleeing the scene.
Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan's border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,500 people in three years.
Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.
