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Last updated on: December 26, 2014 9:47 PM
Pakistani fighter planes and suspected U.S. drone strikes killed at least 30 Islamist fighters Friday, including militant commanders, in the remote North Waziristan region.
The Pakistani airstrikes late Friday targeted compounds of Taliban and Uzbek militants near the Afghan border with what the army called "very effective and precise aerial strikes" and killed at least 23 militants.
Earlier Friday Pakistani intelligence officials reported that two US drones fired missiles at suspected militant hideouts in the mountainous Shawal region of North Waziristan. That attack left at least seven fighters dead.
The attacks in North Waziristan come as Pakistan ramped up its anti-terror strategy in the wake of a December 16 Pakistani Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that killed 150 people, most of them children.
The massacre of 134 children and 16 school staff prompted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to reinstate the death penalty just two days after the attack. Authorities have since hanged six “hard-core terrorists” convicted of previous terrorism charges, and plans are in place to execute hundreds more.
On Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by phone with Sharif. A U.N. statement said Ban urged the Islamabad government to stop the executions and reimpose the country's moratorium on the death penalty.
The two also discussed the rule of law and the need for an independent Pakistani judiciary.
Drone strikes are largely unpopular in Pakistan, where many consider them a violation of the country's sovereignty. But the U.S. insists these attacks are effective in eliminating militants in areas inaccessible to the Pakistani military.
Also Friday, officials said security forces had killed an alleged facilitator of the Peshawar school attack.
The head of the police in the Khyber tribal region said security forces, acting on intelligence information, conducted a raid late Thursday night and fought a gunbattle with the militant commander known as Saddam and suspected accomplices.
The man was killed in the hourlong shootout, while six alleged accomplices were injured and arrested. They were being interrogated.
Police said Saddam helped plan the school attack and was also involved in assaults on health workers giving polio vaccinations in the tribal areas.
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