PESHAWAR: A US drone fired two missiles at a compound in Dattakhel area of North Waziristan near the Afghan border on Sunday, killing six suspected militants and wounding two others.

Sources said missiles were fired in Kher Tangi area. A vehicle was also destroyed in the attack that occurred at around 6am.

Names and nationalities of the dead and the wounded could not be ascertained.

Agencies add: Some officials claimed that a senior member of Al Qaeda was among the dead. They identified him as Omar Farooq and said he operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban sources said that Farooq, 38, belonged to Karachi where he worked as a religious teacher before joining Al Qaeda after the 2001 attack on New York.

Farooq was close to Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri and was a key figure in running the group’s operations and finances in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he also helped direct attacks against Nato troops, they said.

One Pakistani official, requesting anonymity, said Farooq, also called Ustad Farooq, was in charge of Al Qaeda’s regional media department.

“He is the first Pakistani to be appointed to a senior-level position in Al Qaeda,” a military official said.

He said the compound belonged to loyalists of militant `commander’ Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who leads his own faction in the area.

“There is [suspicion] that an important `commander’ was within the compound when missiles struck but this is yet to be verified,” one intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

The drone attack came a day after Pakistani troops killed a major Al Qaeda leader, Adnan el Shukrijumah.

Published in Dawn December 8th , 2014