The Taliban have removed the bodies of eight militants killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, the BBC has been told.
Pakistani security officials say that four of the dead were German nationals.
They were killed by two missiles fired by a US drone at a house in North Waziristan. A number of people were said to have been wounded.
Security sources have closely linked the area to a reported al-Qaeda plot to attack European cities.
The attack destroyed the home of a tribal leader with close links to a local Taliban commander in a village 3km (2 miles) from the main town of Mir Ali.
The BBC has some nice analysis of how this ties in with recent terror alerts.
Intelligence sources in Berlin have been briefing in recent months about a group of militants who vanished from Hamburg in 2009.
They were all associated with a mosque in the city which has since been closed down. That mosque was linked to some of the people involved in the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
In July this year, one of the men who vanished the previous year, Ahmed Sidiqi, was arrested by the Americans in Afghanistan.
It is information from Sidiqi, a German citizen of Afghan origin, which is believed to have led to the warnings of an attack on targets in Germany and France.
If Germans have been killed in North Waziristan then you assume that some of the people who vanished from Hamburg more than a year ago may be among the victims.
According to German media, several Islamist militants disappeared from their homes in Hamburg in 2009 and were thought to have headed for North Waziristan.
The arrest of one of those militants, Ahmed Sidiqi, in Afghanistan in July is said to have yielded useful intelligence to investigators.
By: Brant
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