TANK/WANA: At least 50 people, including an important militant commander, were killed in a series of suspected US missile strikes in South Waziristan on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said between 20 and 30 people were reported killed in the strikes.

The drone aircraft struck as hundreds of people gathered for a funeral in Mehsud's northwest tribal stronghold.

Security officials and Taliban militants have been giving widely differing death tolls, with some saying up to 65 people were killed.

‘We have initial reports that are not confirmed but the casualties are somewhere between 20 and 30,’ Athar Abbas said in Islamabad.

‘There were two attacks.’

The first strike by an unmanned drone killed six militants in Shubi Khel, a remote area under the control of Mehsud's Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), about 65 kilometres north of the main district town of Wana.

As mourners gathered for funeral prayers, another drone unloaded three more missiles into the crowd, officials and residents said.

‘After the prayers ended people were asking each other to leave the area as drones were hovering,’ Mohammad Saeed Khan, 35, who lost his right leg in the attack, told AFP from Miramshah hospital in North Waziristan.

‘First two drones fired two missiles, it created a havoc, there was smoke and dust everywhere. Injured people were crying and asking for help... they fired the third missile after a minute, and I fell on the ground.’

Rumours also circulated that Mehsud himself had been in the area before the drone attack, but officials would not confirm his presence.

Security officials said the drones fired missiles when Sangeen, the Afghan commander of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan who died in Tuesday’s attacks, was holding a meeting soon after the funeral of an associate of Baitullah Mehsud in Lataka area.

They said that apparently the drones remained in the air after the first strike as it also targeted some vehicles in which the militants were fleeing.

The commander, along with other militants, had attended the funeral of Khog Wali, who was earlier killed in another drone attack, along with five others, in Bekh Mary Langara area.

There were unconfirmed reports about the presence of Baitullah Mehsud in Lataka when drones fired three missiles at the funeral procession. Militants and tribesmen fired on drones flying over the area.

Waliur Rehman, a deputy of Mehsud, called an AFP reporter in Peshawar and claimed that 65 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the strikes.

‘One of our commanders Bilal was also martyred. We buried them all in three different graves as some of the bodies were badly mutilated,’ he said.

‘Our leadership is safe,’ he said from an unknown location.

An intelligence official in Dera Ismail Khan district bordering South Waziristan said that the death tolls were impossible to verify.

‘Frankly nobody is clear about the actual number as the government has no writ in that area... We have no other source of getting information, we are relying on local people and residents coming here,’ he told AFP.

Local people said three missiles were fired by the drone.

Sources said five injured people were taken to a hospital in Razmak, North Waziristan.

Earlier, an unmanned plane fired missiles at a bunker in Bekh Mary Langara, a predominately Mehsud area.

The missile attack left six militants, including commander Wali, dead while seven others injured. According to some reports, Pakistan Air Force jets also bombed suspected locations in Karama area.

CONVOY HIT

A military convoy was targeted with improvised explosive device in North Waziristan on Tuesday, our correspondent adds from Miramshah.

Sources said the convoy was going from Beramen to Gherlamai when a vehicle came under attack. The vehicle was slightly damaged, but soldiers remained unhurt.