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

The rugged northwest area is the stronghold of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, and Washington also alleges that Al-Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion are holed up in the region.

"Intelligence reports suggest the Taliban have dug out a total of 13 dead bodies, some of them badly mutilated," an administrative official based in the northwestern capital 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.

Pakistani war 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.

A security official in the area told AFP that two militant compounds, three religious schools and a suspected training camp under the command of Mehsud were targeted in Sarwakai and Barwand villages near the Afghan border.

Paramilitary forces, meanwhile, engaged militants in a firefight at Tanai Fort about 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Wana, the official said.

Elsewhere, two army officers and 11 militants were killed in an exchange of fire in Mattak village, 50 kilometres (31 miles) northwest of Khar, the main town in the Bajaur tribal region.

"Militants ambushed a convoy of security forces in Mattak village, killing two army officers and wounding three soldiers," local administration official Mohammad Jamil said.

He added that "11 militants were also killed as the troops swiftly retaliated the rebel attack."

Pakistani security forces launched an offensive to dislodge Taliban guerrillas from three northwest districts around Swat valley in late April, after militants flouted a peace deal and thrust towards the capital Islamabad.

The army on Tuesday confirmed long-circulating rumours that the campaign would expand into the tribal belt, although it is unclear when a full-scale offensive involving ground troops will begin.

Pakistan's military said in a statement Friday that they had secured a number of villages in the tribal district of Mohmand and seized weapons.

In Buner -- one of three northwest areas targeted in late April -- military officials said that the district was almost cleared of militants.

"About 99 percent of the area has been secured. A lot of miscreants were killed or wounded. The rest of them are hiding in the mountains," Naseer Janjua, Buner military commander, said from a hill overlooking Daggar town.

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