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PESHAWAR (Pakistan) - A SUSPECTED US drone fired missiles on Monday into a Pakistani region on the Afghan border that is a stronghold of a Pakistani Taleban leader, killing up to 20 militants, intelligence officials said.
Suspected US drones have carried out more than a dozen such missile attacks on militant targets on the Pakistani side of its border with Afghanistan since the beginning of September, killing dozens of people.
'Two missiles were fired, they hit two houses in Shakai and up to 20 militants were killed,' said one of the Pakistani intelligence agency officials, referring to an area in the South Waziristan region that is a stronghold of Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
The intelligence agency officials, who declined to be identified, had no details about the identity of the militants in the houses hit by the missiles.
The Pentagon said it had no information on the drone strike.
US forces in Afghanistan, frustrated over growing cross-border attacks from the Pakistani side of the border, have stepped up their attacks into Pakistan with missile strikes and a commando raid since the beginning of September.
No senior Al-Qaeda or Taleban commanders have been reported to have been killed.
Pakistan, an important partner in the US-led campaign against militancy, objects to the US strikes on its territory saying they violate its sovereignty and increase support for the militants.
Mehsud is Pakistan's most notorious militant commander, blamed for a string of suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan including the assassination of former prime minster Benazir Bhutto in December last year.
He also supports Taleban militants battling US-led forces in Afghanistan.
Mehsud, speaking through a spokesman, denied any involvement in Ms Bhutto's killing in a suicide gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi, near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
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