Pakistani officials say a U.S. drone strike has killed at least 10 suspected militants in the country's northwest, near the Afghan border.
Missiles hit a compound in an area of Orakzai tribal agency that borders North Waziristan Thursday. It was the second such strike in the region in as many days. Officials say at least six people were wounded and that those targeted were loyal to militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
On Wednesday, a suspected U.S. drone strike killed five people in the North Waziristan tribal agency. Much of Pakistan's tribal area is a known stronghold of al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized U.S. drone attacks as a violation of the country's sovereignty, but American officials say the strikes are an important tool in defeating militants.
Meanwhile in the country's southwest, authorities say a bomb at a market in the town of Sibi killed at least nine people. More than 22 others were wounded in the blast that took place some 150 kilometers from Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan.
The attacks come as a Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out against the group was moved to a military hospital on Thursday.
Pakistani military officials say 14-year old Malala Yousufzai has been airlifted from a hospital in the northwestern city of Peshawar to the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad.
Doctors say Yousufzai is unconscious, still in critical condition and has a 70 percent chance of surviving.
She was shot in the head and neck on Tuesday as she left school in the northwestern Swat Valley. The Taliban said she was targeted for being pro-West.
Pakistani officials say Yousufzai's attackers have been identified and a $100,000 reward has been offered for information leading to their arrest. The attack has drawn domestic and international condemnation.
Yousufzai is internationally recognized for documenting Taliban atrocities in the area near her home. She wrote under a pseudonym – Gul Makai – in a blog published by the BBC.
In her blog, Yousufzai described life under the Taliban in 2008 and 2009, when militants carried out beheadings and other violence in the territory they controlled – large areas of the Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
Article by VOA News