Pakistan Interior Minister: 80% Killed By Drones Are Innocents (Nobel Peace Prize Huh?)

Just 2% are militant leaders

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Oct 18, 2012

Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik stated Wednesday that up to 8 out of 10 people killed in US drone strikes inside his country are completely innocent civilians.
Repeating a plea he made to the US a fortnight ago to allow Pakistani authorities to oversee drone activity, Malik told reporters that only 20 percent of those killed in drone attacks were militants.
“2,300 people were killed in 336 strikes carried out by United States in Waziristan,” Malik claimed, citing Pakistani estimated figures. He added that 96 of the drone strikes were cross border attacks were launched by the US from Afghanistan.
It is believed that hundreds of children have been killed in the drone attacks.
A major study released last month by Stanford and New York University, titled ‘Living Under Drones’, found that just 2 percent of those killed in drone attacks in Pakistan were high ranking militants.
The study concluded that the Obama drone policy “terrorizes men, women, and children” in Pakistan, and serves only to engender hatred of the US among everyday Pakistani people, and makes terrorist attacks on the US more likely.
The study also noted that Obama administration officials have regularly issued highly misleading public statements regarding drone strikes.
“Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged.” researchers noted, adding that the mainstream media should cease referring to “militant” deaths when covering drones strikes, because the Obama administration counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.
The researchers, in association with The Pakistani human rights group Foundation for Fundamental Rights spent close to a year in Pakistan interviewing over 130 survivors and witnesses of drone attacks.
The Obama administration has been heavily criticized for blocking the release of information relating to its overseas drone assassination programme, and will not even officially acknowledge that it exists, despite countless public references to the programme and the proven existence of an official “kill list”.
It is common knowledge that the Obama administration has exponentially increased the use of drone missile attacks in countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.