Angry residents of a Pakistani village on the Afghan border stopped government officials on Thursday from approaching the ruins of a house struck by two missiles suspected to have been fired by a U.S. drone.

The missiles, which hit a house in the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal region, where Islamist militants have been known to operate, killed eight people including three children and a woman on Wednesday evening, residents said.

"It's barbaric," said villager Rehmatullah Khan.

"They were innocent people," he said, referring to the dead.

Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Taliban militants based in Pakistan, said four of those killed were Taliban fighters and all the dead were Pakistani.

A security official in the area said between six and eight people were killed and he did not rule out the possibility some of them were foreign militants.

The strike was the first since a new Pakistani government was formed about six weeks ago.

In January, 2006, a CIA-operated drone Predator aircraft fired missiles at a house in Damadola in the belief al Qaeda leader bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahri, was visiting.

He was not there and at least 18 people died in the strike, several of them believed to have been al Qaeda members.

Before the Wednesday attack, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft had this year struck at least three sites used by al Qaeda operatives in northwest Pakistan, killing dozens of suspected militants.

The house, which residents said belonged to an ethnic Pashtun tribesman, was almost completely destroyed. All that was left standing were badly damaged parts of some walls.

BLOOD STAINS

Crowds gathered at the scene and a provincial government official said angry villagers had stopped and turned away his men who had tried to approach.

Villagers showed a reporter scraps of metal that they said came from a missile and blood stains.

A Pakistani military spokesman said he had no information about any missile strike.

Neither U.S. nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which would be an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.

Allies of staunch U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf were defeated in a February election and the new government has begun negotiating with the aim of getting Pakistani militants to end a wave of attacks.

Taliban spokesman Omar said the missile strike would not affect the peace talks with the government.

The Washington Post reported in March that the United States had escalated air strikes against al Qaeda fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas fearing that support from Islamabad may slip away as Musharraf's power ebbed.

Many al Qaeda members, including Uzbeks and Arabs, and Taliban militants took refuge in North and South Waziristan, as well as in other areas on the Pakistani side of the border after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the border.