Suspected US missile strike kills 13, roadside bomb kills 1 in Pakistan’s northwest

Suspected US strike kills 13 in northwest Pakistan

MIR ALI, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. missile strike killed 13 people Saturday in a Pakistani tribal region where several militant outfits are bent on attacking Western troops across the Afghan border, officials said.

A roadside bomb aimed at police elsewhere in the country’s volatile northwest killed a civilian and wounded eight people.

The attacks came as U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad, the latest in a series of visits aimed at shoring up Pakistani support for the American effort in Afghanistan.

The missile, apparently fired from an unmanned drone, struck a house in Haider Khel village near North Waziristan’s Mir Ali town, said two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record.

Local government official Noor Mohammad said at least 13 people had been killed, while the intelligence officials said some foreigners were among the dead. Their exact identities and nationalities were not immediately clear.

The U.S. frequently uses missile strikes to take out Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s northwest, especially the lawless tribal regions where many insurgents hide.

This year, the vast majority of the missile strikes have landed in North Waziristan, a segment of the tribal belt that houses several militant groups that focus on attacking Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistan publicly protests the strikes as violations of its sovereignty, and the attacks are deeply unpopular among the Pakistani people. But the Pakistani government is believed to assist in at least some of the missile attacks.

The U.S. doesn’t publicly acknowledge the existence of the covert, CIA-run program.

The roadside bomb Saturday occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, which lies near the tribal belt, and it showed that Islamist militants continue to be active despite U.S. missile strikes and Pakistani army offensives against them.

Senior police official Aslam Khatak said the attack happened as the patrol vehicle traveled through the gritty town and that among the wounded was an area police official who played an important role in arresting militants, he said.

Six policemen and two civilians were wounded, while the one fatality was a passer-by.

Also Saturday, gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying an area police chief, Abdul Wahab, in the southwestern city of Quetta, wounding him critically, said Hamid Shakeel, a senior police official.

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Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Abdul Sattar in Quetta contributed to this report.