U.S. drone kills 10 in Pakistan, copter crash kills 26

By Hafiz Wazir

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles on Friday into Pakistan's South Waziristan region, killing 10 militants, officials said, ahead of an expected Pakistani military offensive in the area.

A Pakistani military helicopter crashed in the northwest of the country, killing all 26 security personnel on board, officials said.

The helicopter came down because of a technical fault about 20 km (12 miles) from the city of Peshawar on the mountainous border of the Orakzai and Khyber ethnic Pashtun tribal regions, the official said.

The United States, facing a growing Afghan insurgency, began stepping up drone attacks on militant strongholds in lawless enclaves on the Pakistani side of the border a year ago despite Pakistani complaints.

Three missiles were fired at militant hideouts in an area near the Afghan border controlled by Pakistani Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Baitullah Mehsud, killing 10 militants and wounding seven, two intelligence agency officials said.

"The missiles hit an office of Mufti Noor Wali, who was once in charge of training militants for suicide attacks," one of the officials said.

It was not known if Wali was among the dead, or if any foreign militants had been killed, they said.

The attack came as Pakistani troops stepped up pressure on Mehsud's strongholds, carrying out air strikes by jet fighters to soften up targets before an expected full-scale offensive.

The drone attack also came a day after thousands of U.S. Marines launched an offensive against the Afghan Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, and as British troops seized important canal crossings in support of that effort.

Helmand shares a 200-km (130-mile) desert border with the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

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Pakistan officially objects to the strikes by pilotless U.S. aircraft on its soil, saying they violate its sovereignty and undermine efforts to deal with militancy by inflaming public anger and bolstering support for the militants.

After an alarming expansion of militant influence and aggression in northwest Pakistan, the Pakistani army went on the offensive in the Swat region two months ago, a development U.S. officials have welcomed because of fears about Pakistan's stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal.

The military says it is nearing the end of the offensive in Swat, a former tourist valley northwest of Islamabad, although soldiers are encountering pockets of fighters.

But no Taliban leaders have been among the approximately 1,600 militants the army has reported killed. Independent casualty estimates are not available.