A US missile attack killed 10 militants in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, security officials said, less than a week after a similar drone strike reportedly killed a feared Taliban chief.

It was the first attack from a US spy plane since last Wednesday, when Pakistani and US officials believe Pakistan's militant warlord Baitullah Mehsud was killed along with his wife at a family home in South Waziristan.

Both governments have stopped short of confirming the death of Mehsud, Pakistan's public enemy number one, and government officials have been drawn into an escalating war of words with Taliban commanders on his fate.

Tuesday's attack took place near the small mountain town of Kanniguram in South Waziristan, a stronghold of Mehsud, who is branded by Washington a key Al-Qaeda facilitator in Pakistan with a five-million-dollar bounty on his head.

"Two missiles were fired by a US drone. It was a militant compound," a Pakistani government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Another Pakistani military official told AFP: "At least 10 Taliban militants were killed in the attack. It was a drone attack."

It was unclear whether any high-value target or Al-Qaeda linked militants were in the compound at the time of attack, an official said.

Kanniguram is seven kilometres (four miles) south of Laddah, the village where a suspected US drone fired two missiles into the house of Mehsud's father-in-law last Wednesday.

The United States military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy unmanned aircraft in the region.

Pakistan has in the past vociferously opposed drone attacks as a threat to its sovereignty, which risk whipping up an anti-American backlash that could destabilise the weak civilian government.

But many analysts and observers believe that the government gives tacit support to the punishing strikes, as it shares the US goal of eliminating Mehsud's network, blamed for scores of deadly attacks in Pakistan.

The government on Tuesday demanded that Taliban commanders release a video to substantiate their claim that Mehsud survived the US drone attack.

Hakimullah Mehsud, a top Taliban commander and deputy to Baitullah Mehsud, insisted that the warlord was alive and also denied reports of a deadly shooting between contenders for his succession.

"When Hakimullah can talk to Baitullah, he can also bring his video tape to contradict my claims that the Taliban chieftain is dead," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters outside parliament.

Hakimullah on Monday spoke to an AFP reporter by telephone, saying that Mehsud would appear before the media in three or four days to prove that he was alive through "an audio or video message," he said.

A senior US official told AFP there were "strong indications" that Mehsud was dead, while CNN television quoted an intelligence official as saying that the diabetic warlord was killed while getting a leg massage from his wife.

Many Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels are believed to have fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion, instead carving out boltholes and training camps in the remote mountains of Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border.

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