Missiles believed to have been fired by an American drone killed at least eight suspected militants and wounded four in Pakistan’s tribal regions on Friday, according to a Pakistani security official and a resident in the area of the strike. Later, seven more bodies were recovered, bringing the death toll to 15, the resident said.
The attack was the first by a drone since the killing of Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, in an American helicopter-borne raid early Monday in Abbottabad, a small garrison city about a two-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad.
The drone campaign, which is run by the C.I.A., has long been a sore point with the Pakistani public for what is widely considered its violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. The government has publicly condemned the strikes, while privately tolerating them in an arrangement with the United States, which flies drones from a base inside Pakistan.
The Bin Laden raid has put new pressure on that alliance, however, coming after the killing of two Pakistanis by a C.I.A. contractor in January, and has inflamed the sovereignty issue still further.
On Thursday, the head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said another raid like the one that killed Bin Laden would not be tolerated, and he repeated a demand that the number of American troops in Pakistan be reduced “to the minimum essential.”
The attack on Friday showed, however, what the Americans have insisted, that they will continue the drone campaign, which has proved to be an effective way of reaching Qaeda militants in Pakistani’s tribal region on the Afghan border.
The latest attack took place at noon on Friday in Dua Toi, a village in North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan. The village is in the Datta Khel area, about 30 miles west of Miram Shah, the regional capital. The official said four of the dead were foreign fighters, but their nationalities were not known yet.
The missiles hit a car near a roadside restaurant and a compound where the militants had been invited for lunch by commanders affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the top commander in North Waziristan. He is a close ally of the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda, and has reached a truce with the Pakistani military, though he is involved in fighting against the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The missiles killed five of the militants in the car. In the compound, three were killed and four were wounded.
Datta Khel is the stronghold of Mr. Bahadar, and many of the drone strikes have taken place in that area because of its high concentration of local and foreign fighters, who are involved in cross-border attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.