US terror drone attacks have killed over 120 people during the last week in the eastern Afghan province of Nanagarhar.
According to a Press TV report, Nanagarhar provincial police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashriqwal said on Wednesday that the deadly aerial raids took place in two districts of the troubled province late on Tuesday.
The senior security official also confirmed that at least 18 people were killed in Achin district while 25 others lost their lives in Haska Mina district. In another incident A US drone strike has killed 25 in the restive eastern Afghan province of Nanagarhar.
According to Afghan officials, the deadly air raids targeted Deh Bala district of the troubled province on Wednesday night.
Afghan government sources say the victims were Taliban militants, including some of their commanders. However, local residents and witness say the attacks claimed civilian lives.
The Taliban militant group has not yet made any comments on the incident.
Washington has recently stepped up its drone attacks in Nangarhar. With the latest fatalities, the death toll among militants from a week of US aerial assaults in the eastern province has suppressed 120.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, among other places.
Senior officials in Washington claim that the targets of the drone attacks are militants, but witnesses maintain that civilians have been the main victims of the strikes over the past few years.
The aerial strikes, initiated by former US President George W. Bush, have been escalated since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
President Obama has defended the use of the controversial drone attacks as “self-defense”. International organizations and human rights groups, however, says the US drone strikes are “targeted killings” that flout international law.
The United Nations has identified the US as the world’s number one user of “targeted killings,” largely due to its drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
In a report in October 2010, Philip Alston, the then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said the drone strikes were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life. Alston also expressed serious concerns that the drone killings by the US forces could develop a "playstation" mentality.
Amnesty International also issued a report in October 2013 noting that US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns. The rights body highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians.