Carter stated: “Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.” He added it is against human rights and asked Washington to “reverse course and regain moral leadership. US should promote the basic rule of law and principles of justice at the time of popular revolutions.

He further stated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 had been used by the US to invoke human right causes, replace dictatorships and promote the rule of law in domestic affairs, but its counter terrorism policies violate at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles.

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His comments came a day after Al Qaeda deputy No. 2 Abu Yahya Al Libi was reportedly killed on Monday in a drone strike in North Waziristan. Quoting a senior Pakistani official, The Washington Post reported Pakistan had played no role in aiding the strike.

During his tour of India, Panetta also emphasized an active role for India in Afghanistan.

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The second drone attack has taken place today in Datakhel area of North Waziristan, killing 6 and wounding two others.

The resumption of drone strikes signifies the new rules pertaining to drone operations have been agreed between Pakistan and US.

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Turks were killed in US drone attacks on Thursday. According to Gazavat Media, a jihadist propaganda website, the dead included ““Turkish mujahedeen affiliated with the Haqqani group.” “It was confirmed that the number of the Turkish mujahedeen affiliated with the Haqqani group was 21, and that there were also mujahedeen heavily wounded in the attack,” a statement on the website said.

Pak Tribune also reported two US drone strikes killed 21 foreign militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. However according to the account of the attack on the Long War Journal website, the Turks killed were members of Victorious Sect, a Turkish jihadist group.

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Pakistan has announced it will take up the issue of US drone attacks on its territory to the United Nations. A Pakistani TV channel reported Islamabad was seeking the UN’s help to stop the attacks which the it insists are counterproductive; countless innocent people have been killed in the strikes.

Washington routinely uses unmanned aircrafts to eliminate terrorist camps that it claims are operating in the region. The US has so far declined to heed Pakistan’s request to halt the drone activities.

The Pakistani government has instructed its officials to collect information on the attacks which it will present as evidence to the UN.

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US counterterrorism officials have claimed Al-Qaeda, once the most formidable terrorist group in the world, has been reduced to two main figures. Ayman al Zawahiri and his second in command, Abu Yahya al Libi, a religious scholar who escaped from the U.S. prison at Bagram air base in 2005 are believed to be its last “high value” targets. The capture of these two commanders is expected to effectively end the group’s operation and result in its defeat.

According to reports, AL Qaeda’s support is limited to Pakistan and Yemen. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has sustained drone attacks in the tribal belt of Pakistan to further weaken the network; “Now is not the time to let up the pressure,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve got an opportunity to keep them down, and letting up now could allow them to regenerate,” he said.

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The US has decided to make concerted efforts to reduce drone strikes in Pakistan. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that Washington has made the decision keeping in view the tense relations between the two countries. Ties between Pakistan and the US have deteriorated rapidly; the killing of Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in May sparked tensions. The situation worsened further last month with CIA and military officials accusing Pakistan of supporting militant networks. The new changes include granting State Department greater authority over strike decisions. It was also decided that Pakistan would be kept better informed of drone operations.

US drone strikes have been met with resistance in Pakistan. Unmanned predators attacks on suspected groups of militants have led to high civilian casualties, which has bred anti-American sentiment in the country.
 

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Media reports indicate that the US military’s unmanned drones, the Predator and Reaper, have been infected by key logging virus. Rob Densmore, a former US navy airman told Al Jazeera that the infection was a common keystroke logging virus – which registers the keystrokes pilots use to control the unmanned drones from afar. It is feared that the virus can potentially allow hackers to gain access into the system. Officials are still figuring out how the systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada became infected. The drones despite the virus are continuing to fly in overseas missions, although military drone units at other US Air Force bases have been instructed to stop. The virus despite multiple efforts has not yet been removed from the main base system.

The US flies close to 60 unmanned drones in its international missions.

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US drones struck the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network in the Pakistani tribal area of Kurram Agency on Monday, killing 11 militants. The attack took place in an area controlled by a Pakistani Taliban leader called Fazal Saeed who is a supporter of the Haqqani Network. According to media reports, four missiles were fired at a vehicle and two compounds in the Khardand district of Kurram. “Eleven militants were killed,” said a Pakistani intelligence officer. “Nine of them were Afghans and believed to be linked to the Haqqani group.”

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Two separate bombings in northwestern Pakistan killed 24 persons on Sunday. The first explosion ripped through a passenger van at a bus station near Peshawar, the provincial capital of the Khyber Pukhtunkhawa province, at around 9 am, leaving six people dead. Another 18 people were killed around 12 hours later when a second explosion occurred at a crowded bakery in the city of Nowshehra, approximately 50 km east of Peshawar. The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the second attack. The attacks came just a day after a US drone attack in South Waziristan on Friday reportedly killed Ilyas Kashmiri, a key operational leader of Al-Qaeda.

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