First US drone strike in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa kills five

PESHAWAR (AFP) - The first US drone strike in Pakistan's north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killed five people on Thursday, two of them belonging to Afghanistan's Haqqani network, officials said.

This was the first US drone strike in the country after Pakistani Taleban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal region earlier this month.

The latest attack targeted a religious seminary belonging to the Haqqani network - blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan - in Tal, a town in a district bordering North Waziristan.

"The drone strike targeting the seminary killed five people and wounded one other," police official Farid Khan told AFP. He said identities of the victims were not immediately known.

However, two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah, both members of the Haqqani network.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, whom the United States accused of attacking US embassy in Kabul in 2011.

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