Puppet pakistani regime not recording civilian drone deaths: Report

A Pakistani leaked official document has exposed the country’s refusal to record civilian deaths caused by US assassination drones in the war-wracked country.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) published a document on January 30, revealing that Islamabad stopped regularly recording civilian casualties by US drone strikes across the country after the year 2008.

The exposed document, recording details of 330 US drone strikes in the country, said the government was aware of hundreds of casualties done by US drone attacks, though it had officially refused to acknowledge such deaths.

The London-based body also indicated that some entries after 2008 were ambiguous, suggesting that information about civilian deaths were being deliberately concealed.

According to the report posted by TBIJ, the officials had used some vague terms such as “villagers,” “people” and “local tribesmen,” with no further details, in the records for 2009 to 2013. It went on to say that no names were mentioned in cases where senior militants were reported to be killed.

The report comes despite the fact that Islamabad has many times condemned the US drone strikes in the country, saying such attacks are counterproductive and that it is seeking international consensus over US illegal drone policy.

The unrelenting deadly airstrikes and drone attacks have left an unaccounted number of civilians dead across war-torn Pakistan.

Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the non-UN-sanctioned attacks.