A US drone strike killed four suspected militants in the North Waziristan Agency on Sunday, the first strike in almost a month. The remotely piloted aircraft targeted an abandoned girls’ high school building used by militants in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, the officials and witnesses said. Three militants were wounded. “We intercepted internal conversation of the militants asking for arranging four coffins for the slain men in the drone attack. We don’t know about their identity and nationality but those living in the girls’ school were mostly Arabs,” a security official told Reuters. A local resident, Haji Niamat Khan, said more than two dozen militants were living in the school when it was attacked. The last drone strike, on March 30, killed four suspected militants and wounded three in the same town of Miranshah, a known hotbed for Pakistani Taliban and foreign militants. The strikes are a major stumbling block in restoring ties with Washington, badly frayed after an inadvertent cross-border attack by NATO aircraft on Nov 26 last year killed 24 Pakistani troops. The United States says the strikes in Pakistan’s unruly northwestern tribal regions along the Afghan border are very accurate and there is minimal collateral damage.
