A pilotless US drone aircraft fired a missile at a Taleban compound in Pakistan's Orakzai region Wednesday, killing 12 people in the first such attack in the area, a security official and residents said. The raid came a day after Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud said his group had carried out an assault on a police training center in the eastern city of Lahore in retaliation for US drone attacks. Residents of Khadizai village in the ethnic Pashtun tribal region said the missile hit a compound of a Taliban commander loyal to Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud, and 12 people were killed. A security official who declined to be identified confirmed the toll in the strike, adding 13 people had been wounded. Hakimullah Mehsud was not believed to have been in the compound at the time, another Pakistani intelligence agent said. A Pakistani Taleban official said the missile had hit a “camp for guests” in Orakzai, which is near but not on the Afghan border, southwest of the city of Peshawar. “We have sent our people down there but we don't know about the casualties,” the Taleban official, who declined to be identified, said by telephone. The US, frustrated by an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan getting support from the Pakistani side of the border, began launching more drone attacks last year.
