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MIRANSHAH, Pakistan : US missile strikes killed at least 10 militants in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, as attackers armed with rockets and petrol bombs killed five policemen in a pre-dawn ambush.
US drone attacks target Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in the nuclear-armed country's northwest tribal belt, where militant networks have carved out havens in lawless mountains outside direct government control.
Two US missile strikes killed 10 militants in North Waziristan, which is infested with multiple militant factions and increasingly the focus of the US drone war against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters active in nearby Afghanistan.
The first attack struck Hamzoni, a village in North Waziristan, where five missiles slammed into two vehicles at around 7:15 am (0215 GMT), a senior Pakistani security official told AFP.
"Five militants were killed in the missile strike," the official said.
The second attack took place in Myzer Madhakhel, another village in North Waziristan, at around 8:00 am. At least five foreign militants travelling in a pick-up truck were killed, the official said.
The exact identity and nationalities of the foreign militants was unclear and it was not immediately known whether they included any high-value targets, but other security officials confirmed the same death toll.
Washington calls Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous region on Earth, where Islamist militants are fuelling the more than eight-year war in Afghanistan.
North Waziristan's prominence in the covert US drone war has grown since a Jordanian Al-Qaeda double agent blew himself up killing seven CIA employees in a neighbouring Afghan province last December.
Under US pressure, Pakistan's military claims to have made big gains against Taliban and Al-Qaeda strongholds over the past year, following major offensives in the northwestern district of Swat and in South Waziristan.
But Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said his government is in no hurry to launch a military offensive against militants in North Waziristan.
"We have a strategy. We have to hold the areas first and we should not be in a rush," Gilani said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Suspected Islamist militants armed with rockets and petrol bombs ambushed a security checkpoint at Speen Qabar, near the Khyber tribal district, before dawn on Wednesday, killing five policemen.
"Three Frontier Constabulary personnel and two policemen were martyred in the attack and the sixth policeman posted (at the checkpoint) is the lone survivor, but he is also wounded," senior police official Mohammad Karim Khan told AFP.
He blamed the attack on Lashkar-e-Islam, a Pakistani Islamist group with ties to the Taliban that has long stirred up trouble in Khyber.
Elsewhere in Khyber, militants stuck a bomb under a tanker carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan. The vehicle exploded into a huge ball of flames, administration official Shafirullah Wazir said.
"The bomb was fixed to the tail end of the tanker with a magnet and the explosion burnt some 40,000 litres of fuel it was carrying for NATO forces in Afghanistan," Wazir told AFP.
The bulk of supplies destined for foreign troops across the border in Afghanistan is driven through Khyber, making the region a logistical bottleneck and prime target for militants.
Separately, an Afghan was killed in an explosion while making a bomb on the outskirts of Quetta, capital of restive southwestern Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, police said.
Police arrested two suspects for alleged links to the Afghan and confiscated militant literature, senior police official Tariq Manzoor said.
Hundreds of people have died in gas-rich Baluchistan since late 2004, when rebels rose up demanding political autonomy and a greater share of the province's natural resources.
- AFP/sc
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