ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Missiles fired by remotely piloted American aircraft slammed into a Pakistani village near the Afghan border on Thursday, killing at least eight people in an attack that appeared aimed at a prominent Taliban commander, residents and a militant fighter said.
The dead were all militant fighters, according to residents of the village of Dande Darpakhel. But the missiles did not strike a compound in the village owned by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban operator with close links to Al Qaeda and an associate of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Haqqani was the presumed target of the attack.
The United States has accused Mr. Haqqani of organizing some of the most serious recent attacks in Afghanistan against American and NATO forces and of masterminding a failed assassination attempt against the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Since September, American-led forces in Afghanistan have frequently struck targets in the region with missiles and, on at least one occasion, with commandos, trying to stem cross-border attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
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