'US drones kill nearly 2,400 militants in Pak in eight years'
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US drone strikes in Pakistan's restive tribal belts have killed nearly 2,400 suspected militants since the CIA launched the covert operations in 2004, according to a think-tank here.
"All told, the 307 drone strikes launched by the United States in Pakistan between June 2004 and June 2012 have killed an estimated 1,562 to 2,377 suspected militants," according to figures released by the New America Foundation.
Of those drone strikes, 70 per cent have hit North Waziristan, home to factions of the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani Network, which has often launched operations in Kabul against civilian targets.
Over a third of these drone strikes have reportedly targeted members of the Taliban, with at least 10 of the strikes killing senior Taliban commanders, as well as hundreds of lower-level fighters, the report said.
The United States' aggressive drone campaign in Pakistan slowed considerably in 2011. There were 70 drone strikes in the tribal regions that year, down from 118 in 2010, which saw the peak number of strikes since the programme began, it said.
According to data compiled by the think-tank, six per cent of the fatalities resulting from drone strikes in 2011 were civilians, up one percentage point from the figure in 2010
The unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan have hindered some of the Taliban's operations, killed hundreds of their low- level fighters, and a number of their top commanders.
Continuing US drone strikes in Pakistan have enraged Islamabad and even last night's statement to lift the seven- month-long blockade of NATO supply routes to Afghanistan referred to continuing differences between the two sides on the drone campaign.
The Defence Committee of the Cabinet of Pakistan said it had decided to "continue to engage the US on counter-terrorism cooperation and counter-terrorism tools that are in line with the international law and practice".
The US had halted drone strikes in November 2011 after NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air raid, leading to the blockade of supply routes to Afghanistan.
Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said yesterday that Pakistan had adopted a clear stand that drone strikes were counter-productive to the war on terror. "We will engage the US administration and convince them the drone strikes are an attack on our sovereignty, and they should be ended. We have to find a better way," he said.
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