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MIR ALI, Pakistan – At least one suspected U.S. drone fired on a house in Pakistan's volatile tribal region Sunday, killing 20 people in the 11th such attack since militants in the area orchestrated a deadly suicide bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said. Four missiles slammed into the house in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, the same region where a drone strike Thursday targeted a meeting of militant commanders in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to kill Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud. The militant leader helped organize the Dec. 30 attack against a remote CIA base in...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- They rumble through the narrow snow-clogged mountain passes in black pickup trucks. In the back, eight to ten men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades huddle together against the cold.These Islamic militants are on their way to Afghanistan to kill Americans and their allies. Their launching point: Pakistan's North Waziristan district- a lawless border area that has become the nerve center of the insurgency in nearby Afghanistan.North Waziristan is a place where al-Qaida and its Afghan and Pakistani allies can train fighters, store explosives and rest from the strain of war. The United States is pressuring...

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban release another audiotape denying that he was killed in Thursday's airstrike along the border between North and South Waziristan. “Today, on the 16th of January, I am saying it again -- I am alive, I am OK, I am not injured... when the drone strike took place, I was not present in the area at that time,” Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan said in a recorded statement that was played for reporters. Hakeemullah provided a specific date to confirm he was alive. “After the audio I released...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Two U.S. drone missiles struck a compound on Thursday in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing 10 militants, Pakistani security officials said. North Waziristan is a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

ISLAMABAD – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least 10 alleged militants Thursday at a compound formerly used as a religious school in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, officials said, the eighth such attack in two weeks. The strike illustrated the Obama administration's unwillingness to abandon its missile campaign against insurgent targets along Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan. Despite Pakistani protest, the missile attacks have surged in number in recent days. Nearly all the attacks in recent months have focused on North Waziristan, a segment of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt where some militant networks focused on battling the U.S....

Leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakeemullah Mehsud, who had accepted responsibility for the deadly suicide attack on a CIA base camp in Afghanistan, appears to have been killed in a drone attack in South Waziristan, a senior security official said. The attack has left at least ten people dead, amongst them are three militant commanders, the official said. “It is immaterial to say how many have been killed in the attack. The important thing for us is whether Hakeemullah is amongst those killed”, the official said, requesting he not be named. He said that the TTP chief was the target...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – A US missile strike on Saturday killed at least four militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, Pakistani security and intelligence officials said. The missile struck a compound in Ismail Khel village, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border. "A US drone fired two missiles, which hit a compound used by militants as a training centre," a senior security official told AFP. He said that the identity of the militants was not immediately known, adding it was also not clear whether any high-value target was...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Friday defended American drone aircraft strikes in ally Pakistan, an issue likely to become more volatile if Washington intensifies the attacks to hunt down enemies after the bombing of CIA agents in Afghanistan. Pakistan officially objects to the attacks on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants along its border with Afghanistan, saying they violate its sovereignty. And Islamabad has pushed Washington to provide it with the drones to allow it to carry out its own attacks on Taliban insurgents, a move that could ease widespread anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. "We don't agree on every...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Suspected U.S. missiles killed four people in northwest Pakistan on Friday, the latest in a surge of such attacks since a suicide bomber staged a deadly assault on CIA employees just across the frontier in Afghanistan. The attack was the sixth in just over a week in North Waziristan, an unusually intense bombardment that also follows repeated calls by the United States for Pakistan to do more against militants there blamed for attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The area is the stronghold of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban group with links to al-Qaida....

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – US missiles flattened an extremist hideout in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt Sunday, killing two militants in the latest strike in a recent spike in drone attacks, Pakistani officials said. The attack targeted a house in Mosakki village, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, and was the third suspected US missile attack in the tribal district in less than a week. "There may have been an important figure hiding in the house," one Pakistani security official in Miranshah told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised...

MIR ALI, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile struck a car carrying alleged militants in a northwestern Pakistan tribal region Friday, killing three men in the second such attack in less than a day, intelligence officials said. The strikes are part of the U.S. campaign to rid Pakistan of a creeping militant movement Washington believes is threatening the war effort in neighboring Afghanistan. The rising insecurity inside Pakistan, meanwhile, is prompting the United Nations to relocate about a quarter of its international staff in the country, officials confirmed Thursday. Both missile strikes occurred in North Waziristan, a lawless tribal region...

MIR ALI, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed three people Saturday in a northwest Pakistani tribal region where militants focused on fighting the West in Afghanistan are concentrated, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. The missile strike was apparently the latest in a lengthy campaign of such attacks by the U.S., which rarely discusses the covert program but has in the past said it has taken out several top al-Qaida operatives. Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes but is believed to secretly aid them. Saturday's strike occurred in the Babar Raghzai area of North Waziristan and also wounded two people,...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan's military on Friday killed 20 insurgents in operations against Taliban strongholds, as the prime minister warned that militants were striking back with attacks in big cities. Armed forces this year launched multiple operations across the northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, the stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban and a haven for Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants. In Orakzai district in the centre of the tribal belt, nine militants were killed and two hideouts destroyed in airstrikes on the villages of Ghiljo and Mamoonzai, paramilitary force spokesman major Fazalur Rehman told AFP. The UN said Friday that...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles into an al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in a Pakistani region the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing at least three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The strike in the North Waziristan region was the first since U.S. President Barack Obama's speech last week outlining plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Obama said Pakistan must not allow its territory to be used as a sanctuary for militants. "One of the missiles hit a vehicle and all three militants in it were killed," an intelligence official told Reuters...

A suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles in North Waziristan on Friday, killing eight people, the second such attack this week. Eight militants were killed in a US missile strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials said. The United States has carried out 45 attacks with its pilotless, missile-firing aircraft in northwest Pakistan this year as its forces in neighbouring Afghanistan have faced an intensifying Taliban insurgency.

SARAROGHA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces have captured most main Taliban bases in their offensive in South Waziristan and will soon fan out into the rugged countryside to hunt for militants there, commanders said on Tuesday. Soldiers have advanced faster than expected in their month-long offensive, seizing main roads and Taliban bases but militant leaders have apparently melted away while their bombers have unleashed carnage in towns. The United States, weighing options for how to turn an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has welcomed the offensive but is keen to see Pakistan tackle Afghan Taliban factions based in lawless enclaves along...

One of the most wanted Taliban leaders in Pakistan has escaped to Afghanistan and is planning new attacks on Pakistani forces, he has told the BBC. Maulana Fazlullah founded the Swat Taliban to enforce a hardline version of Islamic law. The government at first accepted his demands, but later accused the militants of reneging on a peace deal and sent troops into the valley. Maulana Fazlullah was said by officials to have been wounded or killed in July. Threats "I have reached Afghanistan safely," Maulana Fazlullah told BBC Urdu. "We are soon going to launch full-fledged punitive raids against the...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Authorities say seven people have been killed and 35 wounded in a bomb blast outside the headquarters of Pakistan's spy agency in the northwest. The attack Friday took place in the city of Peshawar.

ISLAMABAD – The Pakistani army entered the last of three militant strongholds targeted by a major offensive in the northwest on Friday, as gunmen wounded a senior army officer and a soldier in the capital. The operation in South Waziristan, the main Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuary in Pakistan, has sparked a wave of retaliatory attacks that have killed about 300 civilians and security forces in the past month. The shooting in Islamabad was the third such attack in about two weeks. The militants hope the attacks will weaken the army's resolve as it pushes deeper into the isolated, mountainous region...

Here is an interesting tidbit of information from the charge sheet against David Coleman Headley, the US jihadi indicted for plotting attacks in Denmark. Headley traveled to North Waziristan and afterward offered his view on the number of al Qaeda and other foreign jihadis in the tribal agencies' largest towns (in response to a think tank survey that said a significant number of people in the northwest approved of the Predator attacks against al Qaeda):