Jets bomb Taliban's hideouts in South Waziristan: officials

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Fighter jets on Friday bombed Taliban militant hideouts in South Waziristan, officials said, as the death toll from a suspected US missile strike in the area rose to 13.

Up to three unmanned drone aircraft are reported to have dropped four missiles on a training school for extremists in the lawless South Waziristan tribal zone near the Afghan border on Thursday.

"Intelligence reports suggest the Taliban have dug out a total of 13 dead bodies, some of them badly mutilated," an administrative official based in Peshawar told AFP on Friday.

Another security official in South Waziristan's main town Wana confirmed a death toll of 13, and said some of them were foreign fighters.

The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the unmanned planes in the region.

PAF jet planes on Friday also hit targets in South Waziristan, apparently in preparation for a full-scale military onslaught into the hostile peaks to track down and eliminate Mehsud and his network.

"Jet fighters on Friday started bombing suspected locations of Taliban militants in South Waziristan," said an intelligence official in Wana, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"The war planes targeted the places where Baitullah Mehsud's militants are active... we have unconfirmed reports of casualties," he added.

A military official in Peshawar said that the Taliban stronghold towns of Sarwakai and Barwand near the Afghan border were targeted in the strikes.