DHAKA: A US drone strike in northwest Pakistan killed six people including a senior leader of the ruthless Haqqani network, officials said, in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts.

The missile attack hit a religious seminary that militants and security officials said belonged to the terror outfit, blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan, in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Haqqani sources told media that the network’s spiritual leader, Maulana Ahmad Jan, was among those killed at the seminary, which they said was a rest base for militants fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, reports NDTV.

Earlier this month, the network’s chief financier, Nasirudddin Haqqani, was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.

As it usually does after drone strikes, the government condemned the attack as a violation of sovereignty and counterproductive to efforts to end militancy.

Thursday’s strike was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called ‘frontier region’.

BDST: 1717 HRS, NOV 20, 2013
RoR/BSK