US drone strikes in Yemen : Strikes and casualties | Trends |

By 8 June 2015, the U.S. have killed between 773 and 1,135 people in Yemen, in a covert drone war that is being put in overdrive. The so-called U.S. war on terror looks increasingly like a war of terror, aimed at instilling panic fear among the populations by means of direct, deliberate and undiscriminated attacks on civilians, who make 12% to 14% of the killed, including a large percentage of children (15% of the total civilians). A big number of injured, from 166 to 322, should be added to the balance of drone casualties. If we were to take also into account the victims of other covert operations — air strikes and special operations — the number of fatalities would rise to between 929 and 1,500, plus 181 to 424 injured.

The estimates are conservative, based on field research made by investigative journalists who cautiously discriminate between confirmed and validated casualties, and other cases that could not be fully corroborated. Obviously, the U.S. administration should be able to provide the real numbers. However, in spite of insistent requests, including appeals to civil courts by the press and civil rights associations, Washington declines to supply any details. The fact that a state can perform such a 14-year long unilateral violation of the international laws without being demanded to put an immediate stop to it, and summoned to comply with the law, is a sound indicator of the derelict state of international affairs, and of the sheer futility of the United Nations.

 U.S. Worldwide Drone War, Status as of May 2015.

  areppim: information, pure and simple

   US drone strikes in Yemen : Strikes and casualties | Trends |

Washington warmongers are submitting Yemen to an increasingly lethal and treacherous covert war, using drones, classic aircraft weapons and even surrogate forces. The number of drone strikes and of the confirmed drone killings have grown to a level that can hardly be reconciled with the U.S. narrative about their alleged right to self-defense against a few dangerous individual terrorists. Only those who, anyway, do not intend to lift a finger, can believe that the handful of persecuted insurgents turned out to be the hundreds of civilians, including children, blasted by the US drones.

The heat has been particularly intense since 2010, suggesting that Yemen has become for the U.S. another sanctuary of their worst enemies. Logically, following the old rule according to which any action brings about an opposite reaction of the same strength, the Yemen covert war is rapidly becoming a large-scale armed conflict, spilling over the borders, raising a host of problems, military, political, diplomatic and legal, and making things worse for people who have already been hard hit. It is likely that U.S. strategists did not foresee these developments — they seem to have forgotten the Vietnam experience, and their fast forward round trip from South Vietnam, to North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and...the ignominious debacle of Saigon. Deplorably, they seem ill equipped to deal with the issue, and to find the appropriate solution to get out of the rut without further harm for all involved.

Sources: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

 U.S. Worldwide Drone War, Status as of May 2015.

  areppim: information, pure and simple