The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said authorities had already handed out the equivalent of $1,25,000 in compensation to families of the victims in a remote village in the Khyber tribal area.
Also on Tuesday, a village elder claimed 13 civilians had been killed in US missile strike on Monday night elsewhere in the northwest, contesting accounts by Pakistani security officials that four militants were killed.
Army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas on Monday denied that any of the dead in the Pakistani air force attack were civilians, saying the army had intelligence that militants were gathering at the site of the strike. The victims were initially reported to be suspected militants. The military regularly reports killing scores of militants in air strikes in the northwest, but rarely says it is responsible for civilian deaths.
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