MIRAMSHAH, June 10: Eighteen militants, including 10 foreigners, were killed after Army helicopters bombed a compound in the Madakhel area in the North Waziristan Agency on Saturday morning, military sources said.

But credible official sources told Dawn in Peshawar that US forces had conducted the attack, which destroyed a training facility close to the Afghan border.

The official sources and eyewitnesses said that US war planes had targeted the hideout. This was the second air strike from across the border within a period of slightly more than a month.

The May 8 air strike on a chromite mine in the Khwaja Khizar area near the Angoor Adda in the South Waziristan Agency had killed eight mine workers. Officials had confirmed that US helicopters had fired missiles into Pakistani territory.

In the fresh airspace violation, officials said that at least 10 foreigners were also among the dead. The compound belonged to Sherbat Khan, said a local tribesman.

Intelligence officials said that helicopter gunships pounded a hideout in the Madakhel village in the Datakhel tehsil of the North Waziristan tribal agency, about 45 kilometres West of Miramshah.

An official said that the attack was launched after it was confirmed that militants had assembled in the compound.

“We don’t have exact casualty figures, but it has been verified that at least 18 militants had perished in the attack”, they said.

Sources said the compound served as a training facility in the area, which shares borders with Afghanistan’s Paktia province.

Agencies add: Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan confirmed the strike, saying “some 15 to 20 local and foreign miscreants have been killed in the raid.

“We were tracing them because despite continued negotiations some miscreants were regularly launching rocket and IED (improvised explosive device) attacks on security forces in the area,” he said.

A private news television channel, citing a security official, said Uzbeks, Tajiks and Chechens were believed to be among the dead.

Foreign militants had arrived in the area in the 1980s, with the encouragement of Pakistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia to help Afghan guerrillas fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan .

Clashes have intensified in the region since an air strike on an al Qaeda compound in early March. Security forces have killed more than 300 militants, including about 75 foreigners, in North Waziristan since the middle of last year.