Islamabad: Fourteen people, including three women, were killed and 20 others injured in missile strikes by suspected unmanned US drones on a seminary linked to top Taliban Commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Pakistans restive North Waziristan tribal region on Monday.
Explosions were resounded in the area as six to seven missiles hit the seminary and nearby houses in the region often suspected to be the haven for top Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.
Though the officials maintained that those killed were civilians, including women and children, other reports said that upto seven militants, including those of foreign origins, could have been killed.
The target of the attacks was a seminary in Tanda Darpakhel, 2 kms from Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan. Reports said atleast four missiles hit the madrasa run by Haqqani.
Official sources and local residents were quoted as saying that three female seminary students and three labourers were among the dead.
It was not immediately known if Haqqani was present in the area at the time of the strike. Haqqani, a close aide of Taliban supreme commander Mullah Omar, has not been seen since the fall of the Taliban regime in Kabul in 2001.
Haqqani, a veteran of armed struggle against Russian occupation and his son Siraj have been linked this year in an assassination attempt on Afghan president Hamid Karzai and number of attacks on US forces in Khost in southeastern Afghanistan.
Minutes after the missile strikes, Taliban fighters surrounded the area around the seminary and did not allow people to approach the site.
North and South Waziristan tribal regions are also considered strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud.
Since last week, Pakistans tribal belt has witnessed a sharp increase in attacks by drones operated by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. More than 40 people have died in these attacks.
Twenty people, a majority of them women and children, were killed in a raid in South Waziristan by gunship helicopters and commandos of the coalition forces on September 3. That attack marked the first time that US-led ground forces from Afghanistan had intruded into Pakistan.
Pakistan has angrily condemned the attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.
