Afghan rebels 'getting stronger'

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Militants in Afghanistan are growing in strength but will be fought "relentlessly" by US troops, the top US commander in the region has said.

Gen David Petraeus, who heads US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, also said the Taleban and al-Qaeda-linked groups posed a growing threat to Pakistan.

He was speaking at a hearing of the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

US President Barack Obama has recently ordered the deployment of an additional 17,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

There are currently about 38,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

In a separate development, a missile fired by a suspected US drone aircraft killed at least 10 people in Pakistan, close to the Afghan border, eyewitnesses said.

The missile hit a house in the Orakzai tribal area. Residents and local journalists said the house had been converted into a Taleban camp.

Scepticism

Gen Petraeus was speaking in Washington at a hearing of the Senate committee on President Obama's new strategy on Afghanistan.

Gen Petraeus said militants posed a threat to Pakistan's "very existence"

The general said that reinforced US troop would take the fight to the insurgents who would be pursued "relentlessly and aggressively".

At the same time, he admitted that the militants based near the Afghan border posed "an ever more serious threat to Pakistan's very existence".

However, Gen Petraeus' comments were greeted with scepticism by some senators.

Committee chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, said he disagreed with the Obama administration's contention that progress in Afghanistan depended on success on the Pakistani side of the border, the Associated Press reports.

The senator added that he was also sceptical about Islamabad's ability to secure its porous border with Afghanistan.