(Previous Incident Code: Ob354 )

CIA drones reportedly killed at least four people possibly including a named, alleged senior al Qaeda fighter. However this has been rejected by the Pakistan military which denies a strike even took place.

The attack reportedly came at 6am local time and destroyed a house and vehicle. Up to six were reported killed, four were described as foreigners and two as locals. The occupants were said to be fighters loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a commander who previously had been an ally of Pakistan but ended whatever accord existed with Islamabad when the Pakistan Army moved into North Waziristan in June 2014. The dead were reportedly buried in local graveyards and the injured taken to local clinics.

Umar Farooq, an alleged senior al Qaeda figure, was named among the dead by unnamed Pakistani officials and a Taliban commander who told the New York Times: “We have lost another precious brother in the attack.” However other Pakistani officials said Farooq had not been killed in the strike. The military officials denied there had been a drone strike at all.

Farooq (aka Usted Ahmed Farooq) was reportedly from Karachi and had joined al Qaeda after the September 11 2001 attacks on the US. Farooq, 38, reportedly became a spokesman for the group and had operated with al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and knew Ayman al Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden.

“He is the first Pakistani to be appointed to a senior-level position in al Qaeda,” a military official told Reuters. “He has been key in pushing al Qaeda to focus on South Asia and helped evolve al Qaeda’s South Asia policy and specifically its anti-India activities. It was on his advice that al Qaeda officially declared the Pakistan army an apostate army.”

The strike hit the day after as many as 10 people were killed in a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan. The dead were reportedly Pakistan Taliban fighters however they were unidentified in media reports. The US and Pakistan had reportedly come to an accord regarding targeting the various armed groups that operated on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Farooq was the second alleged al Qaeda member to be reportedly killed in two days. The Pakistan military said it had killed Adnan el Shukrijumah, 39, in a mass assault on a house on on December 6. Shukrijumah was reportedly al Qaeda’s chief of external operations. He was wanted by US authorities for a planned 2009 attack on the New York subway – the FBI had put out a reward of $5m (£3.2m) for his capture. The assault hit a house in South Waziristan, an area Pakistan has claimed was cleared of armed groups after a 2009 offensive. The military said Shukrijumah had been forced into South Waziristan by the ongoing army operation in North Waziristan.