A US drone fired three missiles Monday into a militant compound in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border, killing five Islamist insurgents, security officials said, DPA reported.
Several more people were wounded in the strike, which took place in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, a known hotbed of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
An intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it was not immediately clear if any high-valued targets were among those killed and wounded.
A second intelligence official confirmed the incident and death toll. He said the four unmanned aircraft flew overhead for around one hour after the attack, preventing people from rescue work.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has intensified a covert drone war against Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives who launch cross-border attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.
US officials said the drones are a vital tool in their efforts against the rising Taliban insurgency in the mountainous border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
More than 850 people have died in almost 100 drone strikes since August 2008.
Critics said a large number of civilian casualties in such strikes are fuelling resentment among locals, further radicalizing the generally anti-American population.
A report in The Washington Post said Monday that the CIA is now using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to minimize civilian casualties in drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal region.
Among the missiles available to the agency are the 53-centimetre small smart weapon. Called a Scorpion, the missiles weighs 16 kilograms and has roughly the diameter of a coffee cup. They can pinpoint as small a target as a single person in complete darkness.
These weapons can cause much less destruction that the Hellfire guided missiles that the CIA has been using in the drone strikes, the newspaper said.
The agency is also using a variety of warheads for the Hellfire, one former senior intelligence official told The Washington Post.
Among them is a small thermobaric warhead, which detonates a cocktail of explosive powders, creating a pressure wave that kills humans but leaves structures relatively intact.
The CIA also has at its disposal micro-UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, as small as the size of a pizza platter. They are capable of close monitoring of a potential target and are nearly impossible to detect at night.
"It can be outside your window, and you won't hear a whisper," one former official who has worked with such aircraft told the newspaper.
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