“In the past week, speculation has mounted over the extent to which Pakistan was aware of such flights, amid evidence that at least some of the drones were being launched from airstrips in remote Pakistani regions,” a senior NATO military official told CBS News.

On Tuesday, ‘The Times’, London, had claimed the CIA had been using the Shamsi airfield in Balochistan to launch the Predator drones that attack al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan for at least a year.

Another newspaper printed what it called were images of the site showing three predator drones parked on a runway. But the NATO official told CBS news “there is no single site you can name”.

“We are looking at different locations both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If the Shamsi base has been found to be a home for the drones, that is not the only location,” said the official.

“The locations keep on changing in both countries (Pakistan and Afghanistan). But yes, there are drones flying from locations in both these countries,” a NATO country diplomat stationed in Islamabad said.

According to a ‘Wall Street Journal’ report, Pakistan’s intelligence and military are secretly supporting the US-led unmanned predator attacks on militant hideouts in the tribal regions.

Islamabad has been regularly opposing the attacks saying they are proving “counter-productive” in the ‘War on Terror’, but Pakistani military and intelligence officials see the strikes as a success. “The Predator strikes are more and more precise,” a Pakistani official said.