The attacks -- the second and third suspected US drone strikes in just over 24 hours against Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold -- come with Pakistan widely expected to launch a ground offensive against the warlord.

Pakistan reported Wednesday that Maulana Fazlullah, the wanted architect of a two-year Taliban uprising in the northwest Swat valley to enforce sharia law, elsewhere in the northwest, was injured during a recent army offensive.

Wednesday's first missile strike flattened an alleged training centre for Islamist extremists in South Waziristan, killing eight militants in the early hours of the morning, security officials said.

In the late afternoon, another suspected drone targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying militants in a Mehsud stronghold in the same semi-autonomous tribal area, which lies on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

"The death toll has risen to 40 and five vehicles were also destroyed -- targeted by a US drone in Janata area of South Waziristan," one security official told AFP after releasing an earlier figure of 25 militants dead.

Another Pakistani security official and a tribesman from the area confirmed the same statistic, but a third senior-ranking official put the death toll at between 30 and 40.

Washington has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda and has deployed thousands of extra troops in Afghanistan in a bid to stabilise the country for elections as part of a sweeping new war plan.

The United States military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy unmanned aircraft in the region.

Suspected US attacks and Pakistani air strikes have increasingly targeted strongholds of Mehsud, described by the US State Department as a key Al-Qaeda facilitator in Pakistan's mountainous tribal region.

Pakistan has also carried out air strikes against Mehsud hideouts with commanders vowing to hunt down the warlord's militant network in the remote northwest region known as a base for Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels.

But Islamabad has publicly opposed suspected US strikes, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace. Since August 2008, at least 48 such strikes have killed around 500 people.

The first strike hit about 35 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of the main town Wana and the second about 50 kilometres to its northeast.

It was not immediately clear whether any high-value targets were killed.

On Tuesday, a US missile strike killed 16 foreign and local militants in a nearby mountain stronghold of Mehsud, who has been described by the US State Department as a key Al-Qaeda facilitator in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Washington alleges Islamist fighters hide out in the mountains near the Afghan border, plotting attacks on Western targets and crossing the porous frontier to attack foreign troops based in Afghanistan.

Mehsud has a five-million-dollar reward on his head offered by the United States, and a bounty of 615,000 dollars in Pakistan for allegedly masterminding multiple deadly bombings in the last two years.

About 2,000 people have died in Islamist bombings across the country since July 2007, when government forces besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad.

Pakistani troops have been pressing a battle to dislodge Taliban insurgents in northwest districts that has displaced a nearly two million people.

On Wednesday, the army said it had "credible" information that Fazlullah, the commander of the Taliban in Swat, had been injured in Pakistani air strikes two days ago.

The radical cleric is the architect of a nearly two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in the Swat valley, where the army says it is wrapping up a two-month offensive to drive out the insurgents.

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