2 wounded in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan

Two people wounded in a suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan’s northwest have died, bringing the death toll to 24 in an assault that has deeply angered the Taliban, intelligence officials said Sunday.

The U.S. has ramped up cross-border strikes on alleged al-Qaida and Taliban targets along Pakistan’s side of the border with Afghanistan, straining the two nations’ anti-terror alliance.

Several Arab militants were said to be among the dead in Friday’s strike in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt where the U.S. says extremists have found safe havens from which to plan attacks in Afghanistan.

The frontier region also is believed to be a possible hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said that over the weekend two people wounded in the attack died at a hospital in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan.

The overall death toll includes two children, said the officials, who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

-From Associated Press reports