Alwaght- Pakistanis have held a demonstration in Islamabad protesting continued United States illegal terror drone strikes inside the country.
During the Monday protests, Pakistanis chanted anti-US slogans calling for an end to Washington’s illegal drone strikes in the country.
Anger has been rising in Pakistan against unauthorized US drone strikes especially after the drone attack that killed the Afghan Taliban chief in a border region of the country weeks ago. Pakistan is the biggest victim of drone attacks and most of the strikes happen without the consent of the government.
Pakistan has also accused the United States of violating its sovereignty with a drone strike against the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a remote border area just inside Pakistan last month.
Pakistan protested, saying the US government had not informed Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, beforehand. “This is a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” Sharif told reporters.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Washington had only notified Pakistan after the strike.
A report prepared by Pakistani lawmakers states that 2,199 people have been killed and 282 others injured in the US drone attacks in Pakistan over the past decade.
Additionally, nearly 210 houses and 60 vehicles were reportedly damaged by the strikes. However, rights activists say Islamabad has not revealed the actual number of the deaths, which many believe stand at more than 3,000 and possibly as many as 4,000.
This is while the Pakistani government has been widely censured for allowing the US military and its CIA spy agency to carry out the illegal drone strikes near the country’s border with Afghanistan as part of its targeted killing campaign in a number of Muslim countries, including Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia.
The aerial attacks, initiated by former US President George W. Bush in 2004, have been escalated under President Barack Obama, who has defended the use of the controversial drones as “self-defense.”
Washington claims the targets of the drone attacks are anti-US militants. People on the ground, however, dispute the claim, saying civilians are usually the victims of such attacks.
The United Nations and several human rights organizations have identified the US as the world’s number-one user of “targeted killings,” largely due to its drone attacks in Muslim countries.
