Jul 2, 2016- United States drone and air strikes have killed between 64 and 116 civilians outside war zones since 2009, the White House says.
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From January 20, 2009 to December 31, 2015, 473 strikes were conducted that killed between 64 and 116 civilians, the report says, claiming the strikes also took the lives of between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants.
Reprieve, a New York-based global human rights organisation claims that the administration’s previous statements about the drone programme have proven to be false by facts on the ground and the usa government’s own internal documents. That includes strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia, but not ones in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.
‘Varying numbers have been tallied by outside organizations but as today’s report makes clear, the government has access to unique information to help determine the number of civilian deaths, ‘ she said. An administration official who insisted on anonymity said the White House doesn’t intend to release such details.
Jennifer Gibson from the human rights organization Reprieve, which has brought drone survivors to the U.S. to testify, estimates more than 4,000 people have been killed by drones including hundreds of children and said the Obama administration’s estimation of casualties “is unlikely to be worth the paper it’s printed on”.
The civilian casualties disclosed do not reflect USA air attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, countries deemed “areas of active hostilities”.
The Obama administration says between 64 and 116 civilians have been killed by drone and other USA strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Africa since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
The strikes were conducted mostly by drones but also manned warplanes. Detailed, on-the-ground reports of civilian casualties have always been a part of the drone conversation, but never before has there been a high-level audit or policy discussion of the controversial program.
Obama has struggled with the proper use of drones since the beginning of his presidency, when he said he inherited a tremendous capacity to unleash the highly accurate weapons but not the legal or command structures to decide when they should be used. It makes protecting civilians a central element in USA military operations planning.
President Barack Obama signed on Friday an executive order to command future government’s administrations to work in a uniform way in preventing civilians’ death caused by United States drones.
This photograph taken on May 21, 2016, shows Pakistani local residents gathering around a destroyed vehicle hit by a drone strike in which Afghan Taliban Chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was believed to be travelling in the remote town of Ahmad Wal in Balochistan, around 160 kilometres west of Quetta. The range of “combatant deaths” was estimated between 2,372 and 2,581; non-combatant deaths were estimated between 64 and 116. In an effort to lower civilian deaths in Afghanistan, global airstrikes on buildings and urban locations were mostly banned from 2008. The apparent gulf between the two sets of numbers is thought to bolster a program whose news presence more often than not includes stories like that of a Yemeni wedding hit by a drone’s payload in 2013, killing 14 people.
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“Independent groups, whose own tracking of civilian deaths have produced far higher numbers, said they appreciated the administration’s effort”, it adds.
