Islamabad, Jan 2 As many as 2,043 people, mostly civilians, were killed in US drone attacks in northwestern parts of Pakistan during the last five years, a research has revealed.
The yearly report of Conflict Monitoring Centre (CMC) has termed the CIA drone strikes as an 'assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign', and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year ever of causalities resulted in drone-hits in Pakistan. According to the report, 134 drone attacks were reported in Pakistan's FATA region in 2010 alone, inflicting 929 causalities. December 17 was the deadliest day of 2010 when three drone attacks killed 54 people in Khyber Agency.
Regarding civilian causalities and attacks on women and children, the report said: "People in the tribal belt usually carry guns and ammunition as a tradition. US drone will identify anyone carrying a gun as a militant and subsequently he will be killed."
"Many times, people involved in rescue activities also come under attack. The assumption that these people are supporters of militants is quite wrong," The Nation quoted the CMC report, as stating.
The document cited the Brooking Institute's research, which suggested that with every militant killed, nearly ten civilians also died.
It also mentioned a related research report of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), which underlined that at least 2,100 civilians were killed and various others injured during 2009, in the ongoing war on terror and drone attacks.
The CMC report also revealed that Pakistan and US were deliberately concealing civilian deaths, and that they lacked any proper mechanism to ascertain civilian deaths, and it also accused the FATA Secretariat for overlooking civilian causalities.
"Civilian casualties were deliberately overlooked to avert the public reaction," the report said.
http://newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/198413
http://newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/198413
2 comments:
Too bad it was CMC that reported how Israel was killing innocent civilians, when they were actually being held in front of Hamas terrorists, as they fired. Instead of the truth, CMC continued to blame Israel for the civilian deaths, although most other news reports admitted that most were caused by Hamas hiding behind civilians, or firing from their homes and rooftops. I don't trust CMC as far as I can throw them...
I seem to remember during the testimonies concerning "Operation Cast Lead", the unnamed Israeli speakers who included combat pilots and infantry soldiers admit that they shot "unarmed civilians"(inc women and children) in cold blood. Sighting "lack of communication" between units for the deaths. The transcripts were published in the Israeli state newspaper Ha'aretz in March 2009...but I could be mistaken.
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