DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - A pre-dawn explosion demolished a house in Pakistan's wild frontier zone Thursday, killing up to 12 people, two intelligence officials and a local militant said.
The blast was reported in a village in South Waziristan, a region bordering Afghanistan where militants linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban operate.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.
One intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said about 10 foreign militants were believed killed.
Six others were wounded in the strike in Kalosha, the official said, citing initial reports from informants in the area. He had no further details of the victims' identity.
The official, based in Dera Ismail Khan, a city near South Waziristan, said the suspects had been staying in the home of a tribesman.
A second intelligence officer said the explosion rattled the windows of his office in Wana, South Waziristan's main town, about 10 kilometres away. He said the nationality and further identity of those killed was unclear.
A local militant fighter, who did not want his name made public in case he is targetted by security forces, said at least nine of the tribesman's guests had been killed. He said they were all Afghan civilians, including children.
The militant said a plane had been heard in the area shortly before the strike and one of the intelligence officials said a U.S. drone may have fired a missile at the house. Pakistani forces were not involved, he said.
A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said they had no information about the incident.
South Waziristan lies in a swath of Pakistani territory that has fallen increasingly under the control of militant groups opposed to the U.S.-backed governments in Kabul and Islamabad.
Western officials are concerned al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have found increasingly secure refuge in the area.
Pakistan says it does not allow U.S. forces to operate on its territory. However, unmanned U.S. Predator aircraft have apparently fired missiles at suspected militant targets on several occasions in recent years.
In a video message issued Wednesday, al-Zawahri praised Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda commander believed to have been killed in a Predator strike in Pakistan last month.
Pakistan's interior minister, Hamid Nawaz, said he too was unaware. The spokesman for the Pakistan army, which has thousands of troops in South Waziristan as part of the U.S.-led war on terror, was not immediately available.
