First drone attack after Obama oath-taking

MIRANSHAH/WANA (Agencies) - Suspected US missile barrages killed 21 people, including foreigners, Friday in North and South Waziristan, security officials said.
The strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into two buildings and a house, were the first since US President Barack Obama took office and came one day after he appointed a veteran diplomat as his special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The strikes, which hit two districts of the tribal region where Al-Qaeda militants are known to hide out, are the latest in a barrage of more than 30 since the middle of last year.
Army spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas declined to comment on the strike, referring calls to the Foreign Ministry. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry also declined to comment.
The first US drone attack Friday took place in the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, when a single drone fired three missiles in the space of 10 minutes, the security officials said.
The missiles destroyed two buildings, killing 10 people, at least five of whom were Al-Qaeda militants, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
"The strike was at 5:10 pm (1210 GMT) and targeted a house," said one security official on condition of anonymity.
"A militant den was successfully destroyed. At least five foreign Al-Qaeda militants were killed and three locals," a security official said.
The house belonged to tribesman and Taliban sympathiser Khalil Dawar. The identities of the three dead locals were not immediately known.
The precision strike levelled the compound, which was owned by local tribal elder Khalil Malik, according another security official.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Malik was killed along with his brother and nephew. Authorities in North Waziristan, however, said they have been so far unable to identify any of those killed because militants immediately cordoned off the area. "I suspect a high-value target may be among the dead," the official said.
Jan Mohammad, a local tribesman, said Malik and his relatives probably died in the strike, which sparked panic among Malik's neighbors. He said Malik was an influential tribal elder but that he was not known to have links with the Pakistani Taliban or other insurgent groups in the area.
There were conflicting accounts about the number of casualties in the first attack. Local residents said there were at least 11 bodies, but Pakistani television channels said 10 were killed.
Hours later, a second missile strike hit a house of Dilfaraz near Wana, South Waziristan, killing another ten people and wounding dozens others, the officials said, giving no more details.
"Two missiles fired by a suspected US drone hit a house in the small village of Gangikhel near Wana," a senior security official told AFP, referring to the main town in South Waziristan district.
Although officials initially said most of the seven dead were foreigners - a term that usually means Al-Qaeda - local officials said 45-year-old tribesman Din Faraz, who owned the house, a two-year-old and two other children of school age, a cousin and another relative of Faraz were killed when the house was reduced to rubble.
"All those killed were ordinary tribesmen and not involved in militancy," the officials said in Wana, not far from the Afghan border.
Soon after the blast in the Gangikhel neighbourhood of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, electricity went down and the area plunged into darkness, local officials said.
Wana, a known Taliban and Al-Qaeda hub, is also the main stomping ground of Maulvi Nazir, a key Taliban commander, accused by the US of recruiting and sending fighters to Afghanistan to attack US and Nato forces.
Local officials said the target was a guesthouse owned by a local pro-Taliban tribesman.
Taliban militants immediately surrounded the site of the attack and barred locals from venturing close. The injured were shifted to local hospitals.
At least 132 people have been killed in 38 suspected US missile strikes inside Pakistan since August as the administration of former president George W Bush stepped up pressure on Pakistan to pursue more aggressively Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents in the country's tribal areas.
The two raids suggested that the new US administration intends to press ahead with attacks against militants in the rural areas, even though the campaign has been politically costly to Pakistan's Western-leaning civilian government. President Obama indicated during the campaign for the White House that he would continue to carry out strikes against "high-value" Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets on Pakistani soil, particularly if the Pakistani military were unable or unwilling to act. That declaration ruffled some feathers in Pakistan, where the US raids are extremely unpopular.