drone – praag.org

US drone kills US, Italian hostages ‘by mistake’

The White House says two hostages, an American and an Italian, died in Pakistan earlier this year as the result of a United States-launched drone strike that also killed two US citizens involved with Al-Qaeda.

“It is with tremendous sorrow that we recently concluded that a US government counterterrorism operation in January killed two innocent hostages held by Al-Qaeda since 2011,” reads a statement released by the White House press office on Thursday morning.

Officials say an attack in January against a suspected Al-Qaeda compound caused the death of American development expert Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker.

Two Americans considered by the US government to be prominent members of Al-Qaeda were also killed during counter-terrorism operations in the same region, the administration said. Ahmed Farouq, an American considered by the US government to be an Al-Qaeda leader, was killed in the same strike that caused the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto, the White House said. The administration has also concluded that Adam Gahan, “a prominent member of Al-Qaeda,” was killed during a separate strike that month.

US President Barack Obama is expected to speak on the matter during an address Thursday morning.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has already launched an investigation into the incident. The results may prompt the administration to revamp its drone program.

The death of Weinstein, the paper acknowledged, is the first known instance in which a US drone strike has accidentally caused the death of an American hostage. Previously, the White House has admitted that drone strikes ordered by the US in 2011 had killed two suspected members of Al-Qaeda with American citizenship and one of their teenage sons, also a US citizen. – RT.COM

Japan invesigates drone ‘containing radiation’

Japanese authorities have launched an investigation after a small drone reportedly containing traces of radiation was found on the roof of the prime minister’s office, sparking concerns about drones and their possible use for terrorist attacks.

No injuries or damage was reported from the incident on Wednesday. The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is at present in Indonesia, works at the building during the day and commutes from his own private home roughly 15 minutes away.

Police said it was not immediately known who was responsible for the drone.

The significance was not immediately clear, but a Japanese court on Wednesday approved the restart of a nuclear power station, rejecting nuclear power safety worries in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima radiation disaster.

The chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said the incident was a wakeup call to the potential dangers of drones, including possible terror attacks when Japan hosts the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

It was not clear when the drone landed. It was found on Wednesday by an official who was reportedly taking new employees on a tour of the prime minister’s office in central Tokyo.

Source: The Guardian

Six dead in US drone strike on religious seminary

A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

The missile attack targeted a religious seminary that security officials said belonged to the Haqqani network — blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan — in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Earlier this month the network’s chief financier Nasirudddin Haqqani was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.

Thursday’s drone strike was the first in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal district on November 1.

That attack prompted a furious response from Pakistan, with the interior minister accusing Washington of sabotaging fledgling peace efforts with the Taliban and opposition parties calling for a blockade of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan.

“The drone strike targeting the seminary killed six people,” police official Farid Khan told AFP.

Two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah and said they were both members of the Haqqani network.

“The seminary belonged to one Qari Noor Muhammad, a previously unknown figure. It was not clear if he was present in the seminary at the time of attack”, an official said.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, who are blamed for numerous bloody attacks in Afghanistan including one on the US embassy in Kabul in 2011.

US officials have in the past accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, which has bases in the tribal districts.

Since 2004 the United States has carried out hundreds of missile attacks from unmanned aircraft on suspected militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The vast majority of them have hit targets in the seven tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, which have a separate legal and political governance system from the rest of the country.

Thursday was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called “frontier region”.

The number and identity of casualties is often hard to determine because the tribal areas are off-limits to foreign journalists and aid organisations, but the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates deaths at between 2,500 and 3,700.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks, according to various estimates, prompting outrage in Pakistan and abroad.

A major report last month from rights campaigners Amnesty International said the US may be guilty of war crimes.

The Pakistani government officially condemns drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and last month Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to halt the programme during a meeting in Washington.

Despite their deep unpopularity in Pakistan, the US sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the tribal areas.

US drone kills 16 suspected militants in Pakistan

Unmanned U.S. aircraft fired four missiles at a house in northwest Pakistan before dawn Wednesday, killing 16 suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The strike elicited a swift condemnation by the Pakistani government, which released a statement saying the strikes are a violation of its sovereignty.

The strike in the Sarai Darpa Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region also wounded two suspected militants, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The suspected militants who were targeted were believed to be from the Afghan Haqqani network. U.S. officials consider the Haqqani network to be one of the most dangerous militant factions fighting American troops in neighboring Afghanistan. The leadership of the Haqqani network pledges allegiance to Taliban chief Mullah Omar but operates fairly independently.

U.S. drone strikes have become a serious source of tension between Washington and Islamabad. The Pakistani government regularly denounces the strikes as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, even though senior officials are known to have supported some of the attacks in the past.

“The Government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent civilian lives and have human rights and humanitarian implications,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Wednesday.

“These drone strikes have a negative impact on the mutual desire of both countries to forge a cordial and cooperative relationship and to ensure peace and stability in the region,” the ministry said.

U.S. officials rarely provide details publicly about the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan.

Elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, militants attacked a police post before dawn Wednesday and killed six policemen, said a local government administrator, Habibullah Khan.

Ten policemen were wounded in the attack about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city of Peshawar, said another government official, Feroz Shah. The post was staffed by both paramilitary police from the Frontier Constabulary force and also by tribal policemen.

Khan said policemen retaliated in a gunbattle that lasted several hours and killed several militants.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Pakistani Taliban have carried out many similar attacks against security personnel in the area. – AP

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Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this report.

Drone confiscated at clinic where Mandela lies

FC Hamman, a South African freelance film-maker, was escorted away by police along with the helicopter camera he was flying with his 21-year-old son Timothy outside the clinic where Mandela (94) has spent three weeks with a lung infection.

After nearly four hours of questioning by police, Hamman was released but the drone camera was confiscated.

“From a security point of view, they are concerned. They are inspecting our equipment to make sure it didn’t violate any security regulations,” Hamman told Reuters, adding police had not pressed any charges for the moment.

“We didn’t realise we were breaking any laws,” he said.

Hamman said he had intended to offer to media organisations the aerial shots of intense activity around the hospital, where crowds of jostling journalists have mingled with well-wishers paying tribute to South Africa’s former president.

“We were careful not to fly over the hospital,” he said.

The intense media scrutiny has angered some of Mandela’s family. Daughter Makaziwe on Thursday lambasted foreign media “vultures” for not respecting his privacy as he lay critically ill.

Hamman said he had already used the home-built flying camera in other film projects and had also assisted police with surveillance work in operations against suspected drug-dealers in the crime-plagued Johannesburg suburb of Eldorado Park.

“You can’t fly one of those things without a permit,” one police officer said at the hospital after Hamman was escorted away. Pretoria police declined to comment further.

The incident came just hours before US President Barack Obama started an official visit to South Africa, which will include stops in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Asked how he thought Obama’s huge security detail might react if he launched the flying “eye in the sky” in the vicinity of the president, Hamman chuckled: “That would be a mistake.” – Reuters

US drone kills 5 militants in northwest Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani intelligence officials say a U.S. drone strike has killed five militants in northwest Pakistan.

Two intelligence officials said at least seven missiles were fired from U.S. drones Saturday at a vehicle and a house in the village of Degan in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan near the Afghan border.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

They said the area is dominated by anti-American militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. They did not know whether the killed men belong to his group.

The CIA-run drone program is controversial in Pakistan where many call it an infringement on the nation’s sovereignty. The U.S. maintains it is necessary tool to combat militants. – AP