A U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, U.S. sources said, but Ayman al-Zawahri was away at the time, according to a senior Pakistani official on Saturday. The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.
Pakistan condemned the airstrike and would summon the U.S. ambassador to protest the attack, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. He had no information about Zawahri.
CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack on Damadola village, across the border from Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. sources said.
A high-ranking Pakistani official said Zawahri, deputy to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was not in the village. The United States has offered $25 million for either Zawahri or bin Laden.
``Al-Zawahri was not there at the time,'' the Pakistani official told Reuters.
Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, said only: ``There was an incident in Bajaur. We are looking into it, who did it -- people from outside have come.''
A military spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.
