Pakistani jets killed nearly 60 people in a restive tribal region in the northwest, officials said.
The two attacks targeted a school which Pakistan claims used by the Taliban as well as a madrasa or Islamic seminary in the Mamuzai area of the Orakzai Agency, an ethnic Pashtun tribal region.
“Twenty-five bodies of fighters have been recovered from the school,” Asghar Khan, a government official, told Reuters by telephone from Kalaya, the main town of Orakzai.
He said “13 fighters were killed in the madrasa.”
However, he said a nearby centre of Tablighi Jamaat, a non-violent non-political group involved in Islamic preaching, was also hit in the strike. "Ten people were killed in the Tablighi centre," he added.
There was no independent confirmation.
Orakzai is one of Pakistan's seven tribal regions, known as agencies, and is a stronghold of TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is widely believed to have been killed in a missile strike by a U.S. drone aircraft in South Waziristan in January.
The Pakistani military has stepped up air strikes in Orakzai and the neighboring Kurram region in recent months, targeting fighters who have fled military offensive in South Waziristan.
PHOTO CAPTION
Pakistani naval soldiers demonstrate their skills on a beach in Karachi on March 23, 2010.
Reuters