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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts) Sat Sep 8, 2012, 07:12 AM Sep 2012

Who Is Held to Account for Civilian Deaths by Drone in Yemen?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/07-2

Who Is Held to Account for Civilian Deaths by Drone in Yemen?
by Chris Woods
Published on Friday, September 7, 2012 by The Guardian/UK

When news flashed of an air strike on a vehicle in the Yemeni city of Radaa on Sunday afternoon, early claims that al-Qaida militants had died soon gave way to a more grisly reality.

At least 10 civilians had been killed, among them women and children. It was the worst loss of civilian life in Yemen's brutal internal war since May 2012. Somebody had messed up badly. But was the United States or Yemen responsible?

Local officials and eyewitnesses were clear enough. The Radaa attack was the work of a US drone – a common enough event. Since May 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has recorded up to 116 US drone strikes in Yemen, part of a broader covert war aimed at crushing Islamist militants. But of those attacks, only 39 have been confirmed by officials as the work of the US.

~snip~

In the aftermath of Sunday's disastrous air strike, relatives of the dead threatened to lay the corpses of the victims in front of the country's new president. And local activist Nasr Abdullah told CNN: "I would not be surprised if 100 tribesmen joined the lines of al-Qaida as a result of the latest drone mistake. This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously." Civilian deaths risk undoing all that the United States is trying to achieve in Yemen – and an absence of true accountability is making matters worse.