Press TV
December 14, 2013
US possesses thousands of fatal drones
Audio
Rick Rozoff from Stop NATO International has accused the US government of manufacturing thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the past decade or so to either assassinate people or spy on them in many countries, including Yemen.
“The United states, at the beginning of the so-called global war on terror had only some 200 drones,” said Rozoff in an interview with Press TV on Saturday. But now, he said, it has at least 4,000 or maybe 8,000 drones.
The US military has been using the aircraft in conflicts in Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other nations since 2001 causing “collateral damage,” he said.
Despite the US claim that CIA-run aircraft are used to target “suspected militants” only in foreign countries, Rozoff noted that international reports show major victims of drone strikes have been civilians, many of them women and children.
The American activist said “drone strikes seem to me as another definition of state terrorism.” The US intelligence agencies in the meantime have “direct connections” with “extremist groups” in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, he added.
On Thursday, a wedding party in southern Yemen was hit in an air strike. Seventeen civilians were killed in the incident.
Relatives of the victims on Saturday demanded an end to strikes and warned of tribal unrest, according to a Yemeni official.
The US acknowledges using drones in the country but does not comment on the practice.
Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this year that US missile strikes have killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.
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