U.S. drone strike takes 9 lives in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — U.S. drones fired eight missiles at a compound owned by a powerful militant commander in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing nine suspected insurgents, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

It was unclear whether the commander, Sadiq Noor, was at the compound in Dre Nishter village in the North Waziristan tribal area during the attack. Noor is the most important commander for Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a prominent Pakistani militant focused on fighting in Afghanistan.

The nine people who were killed were believed to be Bahadur’s fighters, said the intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

U.S. officials rarely discuss the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan in detail.

The strikes have caused tension between Washington and Islamabad. They are extremely unpopular in Pakistan because many people believe they mostly kill civilians, an allegation disputed by the U.S.

Pakistan purportedly has a nonaggression pact with Bahadur, the militant whose men were targeted Monday, though the country’s military has never acknowledged that.

Also Monday, a Pakistani court ordered police to protect an Afghan couple who eloped and feared being murdered by the bride’s relatives, police officer Kamal Hussain said.

Miryam and her husband, Hewad, fled Afghanistan and settled in Abbottabad, the northwest city where U.S. commandos killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden last year.They were arrested by police for purportedly entering the country illegally but pleaded that their lives would be in danger if they were returned to Afghanistan.

The high court in the northwest city of Peshawar took up their case and ordered the police to provide the couple with accommodation, food, clothes and proper security, Hussain said. The judges scheduled another hearing for next week.

Women who are seen as sullying a family’s honor are often killed in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, conservative Muslim societies. The court’s ruling to protect a couple fleeing such danger in Afghanistan is unusual.

Elsewhere in the region, the three civilian police-training contractors killed by an Afghan policeman over the weekend have been identified as two Americans and a British citizen, Afghan and NATO officials said Monday.

The shooting took place at a training academy in western Afghanistan, the officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the case to reporters, said the gunman graduated from the police training center 11/2 years ago and was assigned to the center’s protection unit. He was killed by soldiers after he opened fire on the civilian trainers inside a hall at the training center, they said.

There was other violence around Afghanistan, some involving NATO forces, underlining the continuing volatility of the country as foreign forces prepare to wrap up their combat role by the end of 2014.

In one attack, a NATO serviceman was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No details were released, but the death raised the number of foreign forces killed this month to 33 and a total of 248 this year.

Also, the NATO official said two servicemen with the U.S.-led coalition were wounded Monday when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them in northern Afghanistan.

Information for this article was contributed from Peshawar, Pakistan, by Riaz Khan and from Kabul by Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press.