Officials: US missile attack kills 12 in Pakistan

An American missile attack killed 12 militants on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border on Friday, one of only a handful of such strikes this year, Pakistani officials said.              

The missile struck in the Mandao district of South Waziristan, a rugged militant stronghold where the Pakistani army has staged offensives in the past, the officials said, giving no further details. The officials did not give their names because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.                 

It took place hours after al-Qaida confirmed that a strike last month in North Waziristan killed one of its commanders  a success in a CIA-led campaign, but a major source of tension plaguing the relationship between Washington and Islamabad.           

The strikes, which began in earnest in 2008, have killed scores of militants, including foreign al-Qaida members involved in plotting attacks on the West. Their frequency increased in 2010, when they hit militants widely seen as being proxies of the Pakistani army, causing friction between the U.S and Pakistan.          

Reflecting the tensions, the number of attacks dropped in 2011, and they were cut back even more after November, when U.S. aircraft mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghan border. Pakistan blocked U.S. supply routes into Afghanistan in protest and said it was renegotiating its ties with Washington as a result.           

Friday's attack was the eight this year. In contast, in 2010, there were more than 150 such strikes.     

AP