WASHINGTON, Jan 29: Despite continued protests in Pakistan against the Jan 13 drone attack in Bajaur, the United States is expanding its top-secret plan to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles, US officials said.

Commenting on reports published in a section of the US media, the officials said that the CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen Predator drones along the Pakistan-Afghan border and throughout Afghanistan and Iraq for attacking suspected terrorist targets.

The CIA also has sent the remote-controlled aircraft into the skies over Yemen and some other countries believed to be Al Qaeda havens, particularly those without a strong government or military with which the United States can work in tandem, the L.A. Times reported on Saturday.

Among the senior Al Qaeda leaders killed in Predator strikes are military commander Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Qaed Sinan Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the bombing of the US destroyer Cole in Yemen, in 2002. Last year, Predators took out two Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: Haitham Yemeni in May and Abu Hamza Rabia in December, one month after another missile strike missed him.

The attack on Rabia in North Waziristan also killed his Syrian bodyguards and the 17-year-old son and the eight-year-old nephew of the owner of the house that was struck, according to a US official and Amnesty International, which has lodged complaints with the Bush administration following each suspected Predator strike.

Another apparent Predator missile strike killed a former Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, in South Waziristan in June 2004, along with five others. A local observer said the strike was so precise that it didn’t damage any of the buildings around the lawn where Mohammed was seated. At the time, the Pakistani army said Mohammed had been killed in clashes with its soldiers.

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA’s special unit hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, said he was aware of at least four successful targeted killing strikes in Afghanistan alone by November 2004, when he left the agency.

The CIA’s failed Jan 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Bajaur was the latest strike in the “targeted killing” programme, US officials said.

Several US officials, who spoke to The Times, confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year.

The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, and also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets.

Critics of the programme dispute its legality under US and international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with little oversight. US intelligence officials insist it is one of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programmes.