Drone Strikes

Drone Strikes

Pakistani government says 3 percent of people killed by US drones ...

Minneapolis Star Tribune-1 hour agoShare

ISLAMABAD — The Pakistani government said Wednesday that three percent of the people killed in U.S. drone strikes in the country since 2008 were civilians.. The Ministry of Defense provided the data in a written response to questions from the Senate, saying 317 attacks have killed 2,160 Islamic militants and 67 civilians since 2008.

10/31/2013  foreign policy: Pakistan's Ministry of Defense released new figures to the country's lawmakers on Wednesdaythat said 67 civilians were among 2,227 people killed in 317 U.S. drone strikes since 2008, and that no civilian had died in a drone strike since 2011 (AFP, AJAM, AP, BBC, NYT).  Accounting for just three percent of the estimated casualties, the ministry's figures are far lower than earlier estimates from independent groups - the New America Foundation, for example, puts the total number of civilians killed since 2004 between 258 and 307.  Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said that the new figures were "strikingly at odds" with those he had received from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, which had reported at least 400 civilian deaths since 2004, and that he would be writing to the government seeking clarification.