Islamabad - A suspected US pilotless aircraft on Saturday targeted a militant hideout in Pakistan's restive tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, killing four people and injuring six, Pakistani intelligence officials said. Local media reports said a British terrorist suspect accused in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners was among those killed.
Two hellfire missiles demolished the house of local Taliban leader Khaliq Noor in Ali Khel village, 14 kilometres west of Mir Ali in the tribal district of North Waziristan, a known sanctuary of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
"According to our information, at least two of the four killed are foreigners," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Pakistani officials often use the term foreigners to describe al-Qaeda-linked fighters of Arab or Central Asian origin.
Local television reported that an al-Qaeda-linked British terrorist suspect had died in the attack.
The Urdu-language Aaj, ARY and Geo news channels cited official sources as saying that Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, and another al-Qaeda terrorist, were killed.
However, a civilian government official in North Waziristan said "the report was 85-per-cent confirmed" and said investigations were still ongoing.
Rauf was accused of masterminding a plot discovered on August 10, 2006, to simultaneously blow up seven airliners flying from Britain to the United States and Canada with homemade liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks.
The suspect was arrested in the same month in Pakistan but managed to escape from a mosque in December 2007 when his police escorts allowed him to say prayers on their way back to the prison.
US forces in Afghanistan have conducted about two dozen airstrikes in Pakistan's tribal region in the past two months and at least one outside it - in the Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province.
Some al-Qaeda terrorists have been killed in the strikes, but high numbers of civilian deaths in them have fuelled anger in Pakistan.
The government in Islamabad said the actions violate its sovereignty and complicates its efforts to fight terrorism.
Saturday's airstrike came two days after the Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned US Ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a formal protest over the Bannu attack.
