A U.S. drone attack targeting a militant compound killed 10 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, security officials said.

Two missiles hit the compound located in Tappi, 10 kilometers (six miles) southeast of Miranshah, the main town in volatile North Waziristan near the Afghan border, a military official in Peshawar said.

A top Chinese official has warned of a "trust deficit" between Beijing and Washington and expressed hopes that a key visit to the United States next week by China's leader-in-waiting will strengthen ties.

Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai made the remarks in a speech published on the ministry's website on Tuesday, as Beijing and Washington lock horns over China's decision to veto a U.N. resolution on the bloody violence in Syria.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned his officials to stop "blabbing" about the possibility of an attack targeting Iran's nuclear program, the newspaper Maariv reported on Monday.

Netanyahu is said to have directed the instruction at a number of military officials and government ministers who he believes have been speaking too freely about a potential Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Sunday he did not think Israel had made a decision on whether to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations, a threat that has rattled the region.

Obama -- seeking to reassure Americans over the danger posed by Tehran's suspect nuclear program, and any negative side-effects for the United States -- said Washington was working "in lockstep" with Israel to bring Iran to heel.

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated Saturday in New York and pacifist groups took to the streets in dozens of other U.S. and Canadian cities in a "Day of Mass Action" against a possible war with Iran.

About 500 protesters gathered in Manhattan's Times Square and marched to the headquarters of the U.S. mission to the United Nations and to the Israeli consulate.

President Barack Obama on Saturday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad's government of murdering civilians in an "unspeakable assault" in the city of Homs, and demanded that Assad step down.

"Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now. He must step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately," Obama said in a statement.

The Afghan Taliban on Saturday denied that their leader Mullah Omar had written to President Barack Obama last July.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said reports that Omar had sent a letter indicating an interest in talks key to ending the war in Afghanistan were "baseless allegations."

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a "strong likelihood" that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear installations this spring, the Washington Post said Thursday in an editorial.

When asked about the opinion piece by reporters travelling with him to a NATO meeting in Brussels, Panetta brushed it aside.

Dozens of heavily armed Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani military post on Tuesday, sparking clashes that killed seven soldiers and wounded another 10, the military said.

Helicopter gunships were mobilized when the fighting broke out in the same Jogi area as clashes killed six soldiers on January 25 in the district of Kurram, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border.

President Barack Obama downplayed a recent report about the use of U.S. drones in Iraq, indicating that the unmanned aircraft are mainly used for embassy surveillance.

Obama said during an online event on Monday that a New York Times story citing Iraqi officials as expressing outrage over the use of U.S. drones following last year's troop withdrawal was "a little overwritten."