Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the “identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known.” – File Photo by Reuters

MIRAMSHAH: Two US missile strikes, one of which targeted a militant compound, killed eight suspected militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region on Friday, security officials said.

One of the strikes took place in Ghwakhwa area, 10 kilometres west of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan.

“A US drone fired three missiles on a militant compound, killing five rebels,” a senior security official in the area told AFP.

Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the “identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known”.

Friday's attack was the ninth to be reported in Pakistan's tribal areas, close to the Afghan border, since US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

The Pakistani parliament has called for an end to US drone strikes and said there must be no repeat of the operation that killed bin Laden.

The raid also rocked Pakistan's seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.

The drone strikes are hugely unpopular among the general public, who are deeply opposed to the government's alliance with Washington, and inflame anti-US feeling, which has heightened further after the bin Laden raid.

But US officials say the missile strikes have severely weakened al Qaeda's leadership and killed high-value targets including the former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

The United States does not confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy them in the region.

Missile attacks doubled in the area last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010, compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the attacks have been concentrated in North Waziristan, where the United States wants the Pakistan military to launch a ground offensive as soon as possible.