Strike kills 11 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - At least 11 people were killed early yesterday, including six foreign fighters, in a suspected U.S. missile strike on Pakistan's troubled border region of North Waziristan, a security official and witness said.

Also yesterday, gunmen in the frontier city of Peshawar opened fire on a car carrying a Japanese journalist and his Pakistani assistant. Motoki Yotsukura, of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, was wounded in the leg, police officer Mohammed Khan said.

Yotsukura's assistant was also injured, but no further information was immediately available.

In the Waladin village of North Waziristan, a spy plane believed to be an unmanned U.S. drone fired two missiles about 2 a.m. at the house of Amir Gul, a local Taliban commander who has ties to al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters, said Hidayatullah Wazir, a resident of a nearby border area.

Wazir, who lives in the village of Garyum, said that he tried to visit the targeted village after the attack but that local Taliban had encircled the area and would not allow any outsider to enter. Wazir said Taliban loyalists were enraged over the presumed U.S attack and could be heard chanting slogans of "Death to America."

Wazir said that Waladin is in a remote border area of North Waziristan and is one of the strongholds of Baitullah Mehsud, the most influential Taliban commander in Pakistan. Mehsud has been blamed for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and many other suicide bombings and attacks across the country.

An intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that informants from the area reported that at least six foreign fighters had been killed in the missile strike along with local Taliban. However, the official added that there had been no report about whether Mehsud was present during the attack.

The United States is believed to have launched a surge of missile strikes on Pakistan's restive tribal region in recent months, though American military and government officials rarely comment on, confirm or deny the attacks. The latest missile strike coincided with a visit to Islamabad on Thursday by the commander of the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan.

The NATO commander not only held meetings with senior Pakistani military officials but also interacted with a group of local parliamentarians here at the U.S. Embassy. McKiernan briefed Pakistani lawmakers on the security situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.