Five killed in US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan

At least five people have lost their lives in a US drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, police sources say.

Provincial police spokesman, Colonel Hazrat Hussain Mashraqiwal, said on Friday that the drone struck Nazyan district of the province, located 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of the provincial capital, Jalalabad.

He noted that the attack targeted Daesh Takfiri terrorists, adding that a militant commander was among the militants slain in the aerial assault.

On September 13, a drone strike against Lal Pur district in the same Afghan province, situated over 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the capital, Kabul, left five people dead and two others injured.

In a similar incident, Afghan authorities said 15 members of Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban militant group were killed after a US drone hit Gomal district in Afghanistan’s southeastern province of Paktika.

The CIA spy agency regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border.

Washington has also been conducting targeted killings through remotely-controlled armed drones in Somalia and Yemen.

The US says the airstrikes target members of al-Qaeda and other militants, but according to local officials and witnesses, civilians have in most cases been the victims of the attacks.

The United Nations says the US drone attacks are “targeted killings” that flout international law.