U.S. missile strike kills 8 in Pakistan
By Alamgir Bitani
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Eight Islamist militants were killed in a U.S. missile strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials said, after three policemen were killed in a bomb blast.
The attack came shortly before the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which oversees the drone strikes, met government leaders in Islamabad for talks that covered U.S. strategy in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The United States has carried out 46 attacks with its pilotless, missile-firing aircraft in northwest Pakistan this year as its forces in Afghanistan have faced an intensifying Taliban insurgency.
The latest strike, the second this week, targeted a fortified militant compound and a vehicle near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, a lawless ethnic Pashtun region on the Afghan border and a major al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary.
"Eight people have been killed," an intelligence official in the region said. "All of them are militants," he said later, though adding their identities were not known.
Pakistan officially objects to the strikes, saying they violate its sovereignty, even though its army has been battling militants in neighbouring South Waziristan since last month.
U.S. officials say the drone strikes are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to decry the attacks in public.
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