Less than a week ago, US President Barack Obama promised stricter rules in the use of drone strikes to kill enemy combatants.  And then on Wednesday, the US used a drone in an attack that reaffirmed concerns about the drone program.

Officials in the tribal North Waziristan who did not want to go on the record say at least four people were killed in the drone strike that reportedly killed the second-in-command of the Pakistani Taliban, Wali ur-Rehman, dealing a serious blow to the Islamist Militant group.

But it happened at a sensitive time for Pakistan because voters just elected a new government that is about to take office. 

And it comes just days after President Obama delivered a major defense policy address in which he seemed to pull-back the US from the Drone Surge that’s prompted many questions at home.  Last week, Obama seemed to say that from now on, drones would be reserved for targets that are an imminent threat to the US.

“Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al-Qaida and its associated forces,” Obama said at the National Defense University, “and even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained.”

Wali ur-Rehman was not a member of al Qaeda, although the Taliban is allied with the terrorist network. The North Waziristan area is a hot bed of al Qaeda activity, and militant use it as a base to attack NATO forces just across the border in Afghanistan.  Rehman is believed to have masterminded a deadly 2009 attack on a secret CIA base in Afghanistan.