Suspected US drone strike kills 2 Taliban men

Asuspected missilefiring US drone killed two Afghan Taliban militants yesterday in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials in the area and a village elder said.

US drone attacks inside Pakistan have become rare over the past few years and the latest strike, if confirmed, would be the first in the country since US. President Donald Trump took office in January.

Dead identified

Pakistani officials said a missile struck the two men while they were riding a motorcycle in the northwestern Kurram Agency, part of a lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal belt along the Afghan border areas where militants from both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, as well as Al Qaida, operate.

“A drone missile struck the motorcycle,” said village elder Haji Zamin Hussain. The US military command in Afghanistan said its forces had not conducted any strikes in Pakistan.

A Pakistani government official identified one of the men killed as Qari Abdullah Subari, a senior commander from the Afghan Taliban. A Pakistani intelligence source said the other man was also a Taliban member named Shakir.