Tribal police are patrolling villages after Pakistan formally protested to the US over a deadly air strike targeting al-Qaida's deputy leader that killed 18 people.

Pakistani officials said earlier indications from US intelligence sources that Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have died in Friday's missile raid were "not true".

Tensions remained high on Sunday near the village of Damadola, the site of the attack in the Bajur tribal area on the Afghan border, after police teargassed thousands of protesters who torched a US-funded aid agency office on Saturday. 

Aljazeera's Pakistan bureau chief Ahmed Zaidan reported that thousands of people demonstrated in the area against the US air strike on Saturday.

An estimated 5000 people had gathered at a stadium near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal zone.

Offices torched

Some demonstrators on Saturday set fire to the offices of Associated Development Construction, a non-governmental organisation funded by the US Agency for International Development, an official at the aid group said.

Zaidan said Pakistani Muslim organisations have called for protests on Sunday against the US presence and violations in the country.

The leader of top Pakistani religious-based party Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, called for a nationwide strike on Sunday in protest at the deaths.

Earlier, CNN had quoted sources saying the CIA ordered Friday's strike after receiving intelligence information that al-Zawahiri was in a village near the border.

ABC News quoted Pakistani military sources as saying that five of those killed were "high-level" al-Qaida figures.

But tribesmen in Damadola village in the Bajur tribal area said only locals were killed - 18 of their kinfolk, including eight women and five children.

Infidel forces

"We are the victims of infidel forces and God will destroy the infidels," wept 70-year-old villager Mohammad Rahim Khan, whose three grandchildren were killed in one of the three blasts reported by residents.

"The US cannot do this without Pakistan's support. We are leaving it to God to give us justice," said the children's father, 35-year-old Mohammed Khan.

Local residents said five women and five children were among the dead and that all were tribespeople, although the death toll and the identities of the dead have not yet all been established.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador, on Saturday and handed over a formal protest about the incident.

"According to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan," a ministry statement said.

Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, the information minister, said: "We want to assure the people we will not allow such an incident to reoccur," reading a statement which termed the attack as "highly condemnable".

DNA tests

The FBI anticipates performing DNA tests on the victims, a law enforcement official said on Saturday.

In Washington, Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials did not immediately provide additional details about the attack.

DNA tests to determine the victims' identities are expected to be conducted in the US, according to the law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal request for such testing had not been made public.

A Pakistani intelligence source said he had been told by US officials the strike was ordered based on information that al-Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the ousted Taliban leader, had been invited to a dinner to celebrate this week's Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.

They had no confirmation, however, that either had been there at the time of the attack at about 3am on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday).

Taliban denial

Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander, said no Taliban commander had been at the dinner.

On the other hand, Major Chris Karns, a spokesman at US Central Command in Florida, the command responsible for the region, said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.

Incidentally, unidentified Pakistani officials have been quoted in news reports as saying that up to 11 extremists are believed to be among the dead.

One Damadola resident said three or four foreigners had come from Afghanistan for Eid.

Another said he had seen bodies of at least two people who seemed to have been outsiders. 

"Where these bodies have gone, I don't know," he said. 

Pakistan's The News newspaper said the villagers had been buried after a mass funeral led by Maulana Faqir Muhammad, a cleric wanted for giving shelter to suspected al-Qaida members.

PHOTO CAPTION