US missiles killed six Afghan fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in Pakistan's tribal district of Kurram in two strikes just minutes apart on Monday, security officials said.

Pakistani officials said it was only the fourth time that US drones had hit Kurram, where Haqqani loyalists are believed to have fled as US pressure mounts on Pakistan to launch an offensive on their headquarters in Waziristan.

US drones more routinely target Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the neighbouring North Waziristan district, where Pakistan has been accused of giving the Haqqani leadership and its 4,000 fighters a de facto safe haven.

Washington has called Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwest tribal region the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda, where Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked networks need to be defeated if the 10-year war in Afghanistan is ever to end.

Two separate US drone strikes destroyed a vehicle travelling through the Kharh Dhand area of Kurram, which borders Afghanistan's eastern province of Paktia. Then minutes later, a nearby compound was hit, local officials said.

Pakistani security officials said six Afghan militants were killed.

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

"All those killed in both strikes were Afghan fighters and were Haqqani's men," a Pakistani official told AFP, adding that the Haqqani militants had been hiding out in the surrounding mountains for "several months".

The Haqqani network is considered the most dangerous enemy of US troops in eastern Afghanistan. It was founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani and is run by his son, Sirajuddin, both of them designed "global terrorists" by Washington.

The network has been blamed for some of the deadliest anti-US attacks in Afghanistan, including a suicide attack at a US base in the eastern province of Khost in 2009 that killed seven CIA operatives.

A total of 17 US drone strikes have now been reported in Pakistan's tribal belt since US Navy SEALs found and killed Osama bin Laden in the army town of Abbottabad on May 2.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States, wary at the best of times, have deteriorated sharply since the killing, and Islamabad has demanded an end to the drone strikes.

The bin Laden raid humiliated the Pakistani military and invited allegations of incompetence and complicity, while Washington has increasingly demanded that Islamabad take decisive action against the Haqqanis and other terror networks.

The drone strikes are hugely unpopular among a Pakistani public deeply opposed to the government's alliance with Washington and sensitive to perceived violations of sovereignty.

Hundreds of armed tribesmen on Monday gathered in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, to protest against the strikes, shouting "Death to America" and "Stop drone attacks".

Pakistan has lost thousands of soldiers fighting against homegrown militants in its northwest and denies Western allegations that its intelligence services are protecting the Haqqani network or other Afghan Taliban factions.

On Monday, officials in the tribal district of Mohmand said dozens of militants attacked the homes of two tribal elders, killing six people in Ziarat Masood village after Pakistani troops started a ground and air offensive.

Nearly 4,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the nearby tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.

At least four people including a child were killed Monday in two car bomb blasts in the troubled northwest and southwest regions of Pakistan, police said.

One died in an explosion on a highway in Saryab, on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of impoverished southwestern Baluchistan province, which suffers from a separatist insurgency, sectarian violence and Taliban militancy.

Meanwhile at least three people including a child were killed in a blast targeting an anti-Taliban vigilante leader in the restive Matni suburb of the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.

Separately Pakistani police said they had detained a nine-year-old school girl allegedly strapped with a bomb and told to blow up a police checkpoint in the country's troubled northwest.

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