US assassination drone strikes are a violation of international law and infringe on Pakistan’s sovereignty, a senior Pakistani official says.
“Drone attacks are against the sovereignty of Pakistan, against international law, and against the UN Charter,” Pakistani Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani told members of parliament in Islamabad on Friday.
“Innocent people have been killed in these attacks,” Jilani said.
“We are having talks with the US to stop the drone attacks, and we hope for a positive outcome of the dialogue and hope that drone attacks will stop,” he added.
Earlier in the day, an airstrike carried out by US assassination drones killed nine people and injured several others in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area, which borders Afghanistan.
US drones fired two missiles into a compound in a village on the border of the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, local security officials said.
“Six drones were hovering in the sky at the time of the attack. One drone fired two missiles at a house,” a security official in Miranshah said.
“The compound was completely destroyed,” he added.
Between 2,627 and 3,457 people have been killed by US drones, which are operated by the CIA, in Pakistan since 2004, including between 475 and nearly 900 civilians, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism said in a report in January.
Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures show that Pakistani civilians are often the victims of the non-UN-sanctioned attacks.
The slaughter of Pakistani civilians, including women and children, in US drone strikes has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington, and Pakistani officials have complained to the US administration.
In September 2012, a report by the Stanford Law School and the New York University School of Law gave an alarming account of the effect that assassination drone strikes have on ordinary people in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
“The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low — estimated at just 2%,” the report noted.
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