A US drone strike has killed at least seven people in a tribal region along Pakistan's western border, Pakistani officials have said, the first such attack in a month. The attack is likely to further test diplomatic ties between Washington and Islamabad, following the shooting last month by a US official of two men he says were trying to rob him in Lahore.
At least four missiles were fired on Monday from the unmanned aircraft at a suspected training centre for fighters in Azam Warsak, just west of Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal agency, intelligence officials in South Waziristan said.
"According to initial reports there were foreigners among the dead," one of the officials said. A second official said the foreign nationals killed included three people from Turkmenistan and two Arab nationals.
It is the first time since January 23 that intelligence officials have reported a US drone attack, marking a resumption of a campaign that has become the centrepiece of Washington's efforts to halt fighter launching attacks on its soldiers in Afghanistan.
While the drone strikes have killed al-Qaeda and Taliban figures, many of the senior fighters are living in cities like
Quetta or Karachi that Pakistan has made off-limits to strikes.
The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time.
Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.
Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an "administrative and technical official" attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.