US drones: target one, murder twenty-eight

U.S. drones kill on average 28 unidentified people for every intended target, according to a report published by Reprieve, a group that represents civilian victims of drone strikes.

The CIA launched two drone attacks, claiming it was trying to kill al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Instead, these two attacks killed 105 other people, 76 of them children. The study also found that more than 1,000 people, including 142 children, were killed in drone strikes that supposedly targeted 41 individuals in Pakistan and Yemen.

Whether those 41 so-called “high-value” targets were actually terrorists or not, one thing is clear: the biggest source of terrorism in this world is the U.S. killing machine.

The above piece is taken from the December 8 issue of The Spark, the paper of the US Marxist group of the same name, here.  Since this article, another 18 people have been killed in two drone strikes in Afghanistan, a chunk of whom were civilians.

Further reading: a feature article in The Guardian examines the Reprieve report in more detail; see here.