Missiles fired by US drones killed 16 people, including Pakistani and Afghan Taliban fighters, today in a strike targeting a religious school founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden, intelligence officials and Pakistani villagers said.
"There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, a village in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border.
A military official said a house and madrasa founded by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani were the targets.
Haqqani is a veteran commander of the US-backed Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, and his links with bin Laden go back to the late 1980s.
He is said to be in ill-health and his son, Sirajuddin, has been leading the Haqqani group.
The missile strike killed 16 people, most of them Pakistani and Afghan Taliban fighters, according to a senior intelligence officer.
"They belonged to Sirajuddin Haqqani group," said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"No foreign militant was killed," he added, although a junior intelligence official had said earlier that Uzbek and Arab militants had been staying in the school complex.
One of Haqqani's younger sons said his father and brother, also a militant, were nowhere near when the attack took place.
"Haqqani and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan at the time of the attack. They are alive," Badruddin, the commander's third son, told Reuters by telephone.
Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, had been taken to hospital in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, doctors said.
Badruddin said one of his aunts had been killed in the attack on the family home. He said six missiles had struck the house, which the family had owned for 30 years.
Residents said militants cordoned off the bombed site.
Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said an "incident" had taken place and its cause was being ascertained.