PESHAWAR: At least nineteen people were killed after a drone targeted a compound in North Waziristan on Wednesday.
Express 24/7 correspondent, Iftikhar Firdous reported that a drone had fired four missiles on a compound in the Zawai Narai area of Shawal tehsil.
Security officials in the area told AFP that the drone strike had targeted a militant training camp, while another official said that the death toll might rise.
Earlier, at least 18 militants had been reported to be killed in triple drone strikes in South Waziristan. Security officials had said that five militants of central Asian origin and eight Punjabi militants were among those killed in the three strikes.
Al Qaeda’s leader in Pakistan Ilyas Kashmiri was also killed in a drone strike on June 4, in South Waziristan.
Pakistan has come under mounting American pressure to open a ground offensive in North Waziristan, considered the premier bastion of Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militants, since Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.
But Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, the corps commander supervising all operations in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, last week played down “hype” about the prospect of an imminent offensive.
“We will undertake operation in North Waziristan when we want to,” he told reporters.
Many analysts see the drone strikes as compounding pressure on Pakistan to take action into its own hands.
