LAHORE: The US Central Intelligence Agency has started using smaller missiles in its hunt for al Qaeda and other terrorist leaders in Pakistan in hope of minimising civilian casualties, The Washington Post reported on Monday. Citing unnamed current and former officials in the United States and Pakistan, the newspaper said the new technology had resulted in more accurate strikes that have provoked relatively little public outrage. According to the report, one such missile was used by the CIA last month in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan.
The projectile, which was no bigger than a violin case and weighed about 35 pounds, hit a house there and killed a top al Qaeda official and about nine other suspected terrorists, the paper said. The mud-brick house collapsed and the roof of a neighbouring house was damaged, but no one else in the town was hurt, the WP said.
It's the Acme Guided Boulder, mark 3!
| Just wait 'til we work up to Bright Pebbles... |
But two counterterrorism officials said in interviews that evolving technology and tactics had kept the number of civilian deaths extremely low. The officials, along with other US and Pakistani officials interviewed for the article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the drone campaign is both classified and controversial.
The paper said the agency, using 100-pound Hellfire missiles fired from remotely-controlled Predator aircraft, once targeted Taliban largely in rural settings, but lighter weapons and miniature spy drones have made killings in urban areas more feasible, officials said.
According to an internal CIA accounting described to WP, just over 20 civilians are known to have died in missile strikes since January 2009, in a 15-month period that witnessed more than 70 drone attacks that killed 400 suspected terrorists and insurgents.
| 400:20? That's a pretty good ratio of bad guys to relative innocents... or innocent relatives, either. |