Residents and government officials said the drone fired the missiles at the car moving towards Land Mohammadkhel village, sited 30 kilometres to the west of Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan.

“The bodies of the victims were burnt beyond recognition,” a local tribesman told The News on phone.

He said the first missile missed the speeding car but the second one hit it near Land Mohammadkhel and blew it into pieces. A tribal elder in Dattakhel said the villagers later collected body parts of the slain men.

The identity of those killed was unclear, though some sources insisted that they were all militants and two of them were foreigners and the third one was local.

Earlier, some reports said the men jumped out of the car after seeing the drones in the sky and were wounded in the missile strike. Other sources said four men were killed in the drone attack. Tribal sources said the latest drone attack might damage efforts launched by the tribal elders to convince the Taliban to allow the anti-polio immunisation campaign in North Waziristan.