U.S. drone missiles kill 5 Pakistan terrorists

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — U.S. drone-fired missiles hit a house in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region Thursday, killing five suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. It was the seventh such attack in less than two weeks.

The recent spate of strikes has been one of the most intense in the past two years, a period in which political tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan led to a reduced number of attacks compared to 2010, when they were at their most frequent.

It’s unclear whether the current uptick has been caused by particularly valuable intelligence obtained by the CIA, or whether the warming of relations between the two countries has made strikes less sensitive. Protests by the government and Islamic hardliners have been noticeably muted.

The U.S. views drone attacks as a key weapon against Taliban and al-Qaida militants out of its forces’ reach in Pakistan’s tribal region. But the attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, posing a problem for the Pakistani government, which has played a double game in the past of denouncing the strikes in public while supporting some of them in private.

The strike on Thursday occurred in a village near Mir Ali, one of the main towns in the North Waziristan tribal area, said Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

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