Unauthorized US strikes kill 13 Pakistanis

Two non-UN-sanctioned US drone attacks have killed at least seven people and wounded several others in the troubled northwestern Pakistan.

Local officials say the first drone fired two missiles at a vehicle parked outside a house in the North Waziristan tribal district.

“The US drone hit a car immediately after it parked outside a house,” AFP quoted an intelligence official as saying. Four people were killed in the incident.

The unnamed official added that another drone attack took three lives in the same region.

A third drone strike killed at least six people around 60 kilometers south of the Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

“A US drone was chasing a vehicle, it fired two missiles just after the car was parked,” an intelligence official in Miranshah said, adding that three others were also injured.

The air raids come just two days after thousands of Pakistani tribesmen, who blame Washington for the soaring civilian death toll, rallied against unauthorized US drone strikes.

Last year, the US conducted over 120 strikes in Pakistan, killing nearly 1,200 people.

The aerial raids, initiated by former US President George W. Bush, have been escalated under President Barak Obama. Washington claims the airstrikes target militants, but most of the attacks result in civilian casualties.

According to Pakistani sources, the drone attacks kill almost 50 civilians for every militant they target — giving it a hit rate of two percent.

Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people have held an anti-US demonstration in northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar to protest civilian killings by non-UN-sanctioned US drone attacks.

The issue of civilian casualties has fueled anti-American sentiments in Pakistan and strained Islamabad-Washington relations.

The Pakistani government condemns the strikes, and argues that it violates the country’s sovereignty.

The United Nations says the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan are a growing challenge to the international rule of law.

UN special envoy on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston said in a report in late October 2010 that the attacks were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life.

Alston also said he feared that the drone killings by the US Central Intelligence Agency could develop a “playstation” mentality.