The United States has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda and Thursday flew 4,000 Marines into Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan under a major assault launched as part of a sweeping new war plan.

"Three missiles hit the hideout of Taliban commander Noor Wali," one Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Wali is a close ally of Mehsud, who has a five-million-dollar US price on his head and a Pakistani bounty of 615,000 dollars if found dead or alive.

"Seven were killed in Kokat Khel. It is not yet confirmed if the commander is among the dead," another security official added. He said all those killed were Taliban militants.

Wali's compound was hit in the village of Kokat Khel in South Waziristan, which lies on the border with Afghanistan, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) east of Wana -- the main town in the wild, semi-autonomous region.

"Reports from the area confirmed that around 12 militants were killed in the raid," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity despite the insistence of the earlier official that not more than seven people died.

Pakistani troops have been pressing a two-month battle to dislodge Taliban insurgents in three northwest districts and have waged air raids in South Waziristan to lay the groundwork for a ground assault against Mehsud.

"It was a US drone attack. We have checked -- no Pakistani aircraft was involved in this incident," another Pakistani military official said.

The United States 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 drones in the region.

Washington has branded Pakistan's rugged northwest tribal belt as the most dangerous place in the world for Americans, saying Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels are plotting attacks on Western targets from militant hideouts there.

Pakistan publicly opposes US strikes, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace. Since August 2008, at least 44 such strikes have killed more than 440 people.

Mehsud has been blamed for some of the worst attacks in Pakistan, where about 2,000 people have died in bombings since July 2007.

Elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, 26 security personnel were killed in a military helicopter crash in the tribal belt on Friday.

"An MI-17 (military) helicopter crashed due to a technical fault this afternoon at the border of Orakzai and Khyber agency. Twenty-six security personnel on board embraced shahadat (martyrdom)," a senior security official said.

Pakistan has launched air raids in the tribal belt in preparation for a second front against the Taliban as troops wrap up their offensive in Swat.

During the last 24 hours, the Pakistani military said at least 13 militants and four local tribesmen were killed in the districts of Swat and Dir.

Death tolls released by Pakistan are impossible to confirm independently because fighting takes place in closed military zones and the army has faced scepticism that more than 1,600 militants have been killed since late April.

Washington alleges Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion are holed up in South Waziristan.

earlier related report
France urged to reveal secret files on 2002 Pakistan attack
Anti-terror judges leading an inquiry into the 2002 killing of 11 French engineers in Pakistan have asked France's defence minister to open up classified government files, a source said Saturday.

Judges Marc Trevidic et Yves Jannier want "all documents" pertaining to the Karachi attack -- linked to a contract with French state firm DCN and murky commissions -- be made available, French weekly Le Point added on its website.

The inquiry has focused on allegations of a link to a corrupt 1994 submarine deal with Islamabad, amid suspicions the attack could have been ordered as punishment after Paris stopped paying commissions to Pakistani intermediaries.

The 11 engineers, along with three Pakistani victims, were employed on the submarine deal when a car packed with explosives rammed into their minibus on May 8, 2002.

The lawyer for the victim's families, Olivier Morice, believes the attack is directly linked to "a halt to commission payments" from France to Islamabad.

Magali Drouet, daughter of one victim, says the magistrates specifically believe the attack was ordered because payments were not made to Asif Ali Zardari, who is now Pakistan's president but was a minister at the time.

According to Le Point, the investigating magistrates want Defence Minister Herve Morin to order the release of sealed documents revealing the recipients of these payments plus intelligence files on the attack.

Two alleged members of an Al-Qaeda-linked group were convicted in Pakistan in 2003 over the Karachi attack, but both were acquitted in May this year after a court ruled there was insufficient evidence against them.

Details of the commission payments for the sub deal emerged in 2008 as part of an investigation into French arms sales.

Legal at the time -- although they have since been banned -- the commissions were set up when Edouard Balladur was prime minister. They stopped after his rival Jacques Chirac was elected president in 1995.

Investigators suspect Chirac blocked the payments because kickbacks were being siphoned off to fund a war chest for his rival Balladur, who ran unsuccessfully against him in the 1995 race.

Balladur's campaign manager was the young Nicolas Sarkozy. Now president, Sarkozy last month dismissed any suggestion of links to commission payments as "grotesque."

The Paris prosecutor's office has also said there were "no objective elements" linking the attack to the submarine deal.

Classified documents can only be disclosed if the defence minister acts following guidance from a special French government commission designed to protect the national interest.

Morin told French radio last month that he was unaware of the contents of any such documents, adding that he was "only committed to declassifying what the commission recommends be declassified."

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