The missiles destroyed a vehicle and compound in North Waziristan, reputedly the country's most impregnable Taliban and Al-Qaeda fortress where US officials want Pakistan to launch a ground offensive to eliminate the militant threat.

Local security officials said unmanned US aircraft struck Mir Ali village, 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Miranshah, the tribal district's main town.

The identities of the dead were not immediately known, but officials believed that most were Pakistani, rather than Afghan or Arab fighters. The Mir Ali area is a renowned stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.

"According to initial reports a compound was hit, but later on it was confirmed that a vehicle was also hit," said a Pakistani security official in Peshawar, the administrative capital of the northwest.

"Both the targets were in Mir Ali and hit almost back to back. We have reports of 18 militants death, but can confirm only 15 at the moment," he said.

Intelligence officials in Miranshah put the death toll as high as 21 and said that two vehicles were destroyed by four missiles fired from US drones.

Separately officials said Taliban militants have detained 23 tribesmen for meeting Pakistan's powerful army chief in the country's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border this month.

Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP from an undisclosed location that a militant "court" would decide their fate for meeting General Ashfaq Kayani.

Intelligence officials and a local government official said the elders from a district of South Waziristan were summoned by the Taliban to Razmak, a town in neighbouring North Waziristan, on December 17 and are yet to return.

Washington says wiping-out the militant threat in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt is vital to winning the nine-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan and defeating Al-Qaeda.

The United States does not confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the aircraft in the region.

The covert campaign has doubled missile attacks in the tribal area this year where around 100 drone strikes have killed more than 640 people since January 1, compared to 45 killing 420 people in 2009, according to an AFP tally.

Pakistan tacitly cooperates with the bombing campaign, which US officials say has severely weakened Al-Qaeda's leadership, but has stalled on launching an offensive in North Waziristan, saying its troops are overstretched.

The United Nations said Monday it had suspended food handouts in Bajaur, which like North Waziristan is one of seven districts in the tribal belt, after 43 people were killed in Pakistan's first female suicide bombing.

The decision impacts nearly 300,000 people who depend on general rations from the World Food Programme (WFP) after being affected by years of fighting between Pakistani soldiers and homegrown Taliban militants.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack in part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt, which Washington considers Al-Qaeda's main global hub and is subject to the covert drone campaign.

The United Nations said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was "appalled" by the attack.

US President Barack Obama said killing civilians outside a WFP distribution point was "an affront to the people of Pakistan and to all humanity".

Around 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on networks linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

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