US drone strikes publicly criticised by Yemeni cabinet minister

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

US drone strikes publicly criticised by Yemeni cabinet minister

Reuters in Dubai
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 January 2013 18.18 GMT

A Yemeni cabinet minister has criticised the use of unmanned US drones against suspected al-Qaida militants in Yemen, a tactic that has outraged communities in targeted areas, and urged a move to ground operations to avoid hurting civilians.

Yemen, a country plagued by lawlessness that has been exploited by al-Qaida to launch attacks on Arab and western targets, has witnessed a rising tempo of US missile strikes in recent weeks.

"To have an innocent person fall, this is a major breach," Yemeni human rights minister Hooria Mashhour told Reuters on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, voicing rare public opposition to drones by a member of the cabinet.

The comments by Mashhour, formerly a top activist in the mass unrest that ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh a year ago, reflect growing public unease about the strikes and amounted to rare criticism from within the government.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/22/us-drone-strikes-criticised-yemen-minister

[CalFresh]

1. US now using the double tap on drone attacks.

Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.

The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.

And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene.

The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that people often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack. <snip>




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208307/Americas-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-killing-49-people-known-terrorist-Pakistan.html