Mir Ali, Pakistan (AP) - Drone aircraft unleashed a missile attack in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Wednesday, keeping up the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.

The stepped-up campaign that included Wednesday's strike is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.

In the latest strike, US missiles killed 12 people in a house in Dargah Mandi, 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) west of the main town of Miran Shah in North Waziristan, Pakistani intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.

The missiles have killed more than 60 people in 13 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.

1998 file photo, Jalaluddin Haqqani,
then Taliban Army Supreme Commander.

As-salaam Alaikum

Emir Haqqani, the Guinness Book of World Records called, they desire a more recent photograph to accompany your claim of surviving a record number of airstrikes. Also, post-strike BDA photos would help to validate your claim.