U.S. defends drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan amid rights groups’ charges

PanARMENIAN.Net - The U.S. has defended its drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, saying it takes "extraordinary care" to ensure they comply with international law, BBC News reported.

The unmanned raids targeting terror suspects were a "course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life", the White House said.

It follows allegations by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of the unlawful killing of civilians.

Pakistan's PM on Tuesday, October 22 urged the U.S. to end drone attacks in his country.

Speaking at the start of a visit to the U.S., Nawaz Sharif said the attacks violated his country's sovereignty. He added that the raids were a "major irritant" in relations with Washington.

Drone warfare has become common in the U.S. pursuit of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Few details are known about these covert operations, which are directed remotely from control rooms, often on other continents.

Senior militant leaders have been killed but civilians have also died, causing outrage in Pakistan, where many assert that the strikes cause indiscriminate deaths and injuries.

In a new report released on Tuesday, Amnesty said it reviewed nine of 45 recent drone strikes in North Waziristan and found a number of victims were unarmed.

In a separate report looking at six U.S. attacks in Yemen, Human Rights Watch says two of them killed civilians at random, violating international law.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Washington was "reviewing the reports carefully". Last week, a UN investigation found that U.S. drone strikes had killed at least 400 civilians in Pakistan, far more than the U.S. has ever acknowledged.

UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson accused the U.S. of challenging international legal norms by advocating the use of lethal force outside war zones.

A controversial aspect of the U.S. policy is that drone attacks are carried out not by the military but by the Central Intelligence Agency.

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has argued in favour of the policy, saying that the U.S. will continue to defend itself.

President Obama has insisted the strategy was "kept on a very tight leash" and that without the drones, the U.S. would have had to resort to "more intrusive military action".