Meanwhile, a newspaper reported that the mission was launched on intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahri had been invited to dinner that night in one of three houses leveled by the attack on Damadola, a village near the Afghan border.

Islamabad --which insists it does not allow the 20,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt for Taliban or al-Qaida fighters --has condemned the strike. The Pakistanis have shown increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected U.S. attacks along the frontier aimed at Islamic militants.

Pakistani officials say innocent people were among the 17 men, women and children killed in Friday's attack and al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, was not even there.

Survivors in Damadola, an ethnic Pashtun hamlet about four miles from the border with Afghanistan, also denied militants were there, but some news reports quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.

A senior intelligence official said Sunday that 12 bodies had been taken away, including seven foreigners.

He said the bodies were reclaimed by other militants, but another Pakistani official told The Associated Press on Saturday that some were taken away for DNA tests. A law enforcement official in Washington said the FBI expected to conduct the tests to determine victims' identities, although Pakistan had not yet formally requested them.

The claims by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, could not be independently verified.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington declined to comment on US media reports that a CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles Friday at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit al-Zawahri, whose videos have made him the face and voice of al-Qaida.

A large number of al-Qaida and Taliban combatants, including al-Zawahri and bin Laden, are believed to have sought refuge along the rugged, porous and ill-defined border.

Some 10,000 people rallied in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, chanting "Death to America" and "Stop bombing against innocent people." Hundreds of police carrying batons and shields were deployed, but the rally ended after an hour with no violence reported.

Hundreds more rallied in the capital, Islamabad, and in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar and elsewhere, burning American flags and demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

In Pakistan's strongest reaction, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Saturday called the attack "highly condemnable" and said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it protested to US Ambassador Ryan Crocker over the "loss of innocent civilian lives."

Neither addressed the target of the airstrike. But two senior Pakistani security officials confirmed to AP that al-Zawahri was the intended victim and said Pakistan's assessment was that the CIA acted on incorrect information.

On Sunday, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, citing unidentified senior officials, reported that two clerics, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat, both wanted for harboring militants, also were invited to the dinner with al-Zawahri.

A senior army official said Sunday that "foreigners" were reported in the area, but there was no information al-Zawahri was among them.

Al-Zawahri may have come to area to meet with his wife who is from the Mahmoond tribe, which is predominant in the area around Damadola, for last week's Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, according to one Pakistan intelligence official.

In a speech broadcast Sunday on state-run Pakistan Television, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf did not address the strike directly but warned his countrymen not to harbor militants, saying it would only increase violence within Pakistan's borders.

"If we keep sheltering foreign terrorists here ... our future will not be good. Remember what I say," Musharraf said in the speech, made Saturday in the northwestern town of Sawabi.

Many in this nation of 150 million people object to Musharraf's alliance with Washington in the war on international terror groups, seeing it as a veiled campaign against Muslims.

Ghafoor Ahmed, a leader in the coalition of anti-US Islamic groups that organized nationwide rallies Sunday, called for Musharraf's resignation. "The army cannot defend the country under in his leadership," he said.

On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen chanting "God is great!" took to the streets of a town near Damadola to castigate the attack. Elsewhere in the area, a mob burned the office of a U.S.-supported aid group near Damadola.

In Damadola, villagers said all the dead were local people and denied harboring al-Zawahri or any other Islamic extremists.

The strike left three homes hundreds of yards apart in ruins. People in the area said the blasts could be felt miles away.

Doctors told AP at least 17 people died, including women and children, but residents put the death toll at more than 30.

Bin Laden and al-Zawahri, both of whom have $25 million U.S. bounties on their heads, are believed to have been hiding along the rugged Pakistan-Afghan frontier since the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.