A US missile strike killed seven rebels in an attack targeting a compound in Pakistan's restive tribal region near the Afghan border on Monday, local security officials said.

The strike occurred in Shalam Raghzai, 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan tribal region in the early hours.

The attack came just three days after a US drone strike that local officials said likely killed a senior Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the network's most feared operational leaders.

"A US drone targeting a compound near a religious seminary fired two missiles killing seven militants," a senior security official in the area told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Another security official confirmed the strike and toll but said "the identities of those killed in the strike were not immediately known".

The site of the latest attack was around 10 kilometres south of the Ghwakhwa area where Kashmiri was reported killed.

Kashmiri has a US bounty of $5 million on his head and Pakistani officials said he was the target of Friday's drone strike, in which nine members of his banned group died.

The 47-year-old has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks on Western targets, as well as in India and Pakistan.

Pakistan's rugged northwest tribal region is known as the country's main stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants, and bomb attacks are common.

At least 24 people were killed in two separate bomb attacks in the northwestern cities of Peshawar and Nowshera on Sunday.

Monday's strike was the 10th to be reported in Pakistan's tribal areas, close to the Afghan border, since US commandos killed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in a raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

The Pakistani parliament has called for an end to US drone strikes and said there must be no repeat of the operation that killed bin Laden, despite President Barack Obama saying he reserves the right to act again.

The raid also rocked Pakistan's security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.

The drone strikes are hugely unpopular among the general public, who are deeply opposed to the government's alliance with Washington, and inflame anti-US feeling, which has surged further after the bin Laden raid.

But US officials say the missile strikes have severely weakened Al-Qaeda's leadership and killed high-value targets including the former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

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

Missile attacks doubled in the area last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010, compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the attacks have been concentrated in North Waziristan, the most notorious Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastion in Pakistan, where the United States wants Pakistan to launch a ground offensive as soon as possible.

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