(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
International rights groups have condemned the United States over its secretive drone attack program.
And Pakistan's Prime Minister has called on the US to stop drone attacks altogether in his country.
Santilla Chingaipe reports.
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The US has long argued that the drone strikes are an important and effective tool in the fight against militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who have strongholds in Pakistan's tribal areas, along the border with Afghanistan.
But critics say hundreds of innocent civilians have died in the strikes.
In a report, Amnesty international has called on the US to end the secrecy surrounding its drone campaign in Pakistan and bring those responsible for illegal strikes to justice.
The rights group says there appears to be no justification for two drone attacks it has documented in northwest Pakistan last year.
Amnesty International Researcher Mustafa Qadri says one of those attacks killed a grandmother as she picked vegetables.
"A 68 year old woman, Mamana Bibi, was killed in a drone strike that appears to have been directly targeted at her. Her grandchildren recounted in painful detail to Amnesty International the moment when she was blown into pieces in front of their very eyes while she was gathering vegetables. Almost a year to the day, her family has yet to receive any acknowledgment from the US that she was killed by one of its drones, yet alone any justice or compensation for her killing."
In the second incident, Amnesty says 18 labourers were killed in a village on the Afghan border as they ate a meal at the end of the day.
According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the US has carried out nearly 400 drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal districts since 2004.
It says those attacks have killed more than 2,500 people.
In a separate report, Human Rights Watch, looked at six US drone attacks in Yemen, which it claims have been unacknowledged.
Spokeswoman Letta Tayler says the attacks either clearly, or possibly, violated international law.
"In two attacks we examined the strikes indiscriminately killed civilians. That's a clear violation of the laws of war. In the other cases that we examined we found evidence that the United States was either killing disproportionate number of civilians or killing suspects who might not have been valid criminal targets. These findings raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration is being honest about who it's killing in these strikes, because it's saying civilian casualties are extremely rare."
Amnesty's Mustafa Qadri says without more transparency it is impossible to test US claims that the attacks are based on reliable intelligence and conform to international law.
"The most challenging situation we had to face was the complete and utter secrecy of the US authorities. Because of that, we cannot be 100 per cent certain, but we are very concerned that these and other killings documented in our report may constitute extrajudicial executions or war crimes."
Letta Tayler from Human Rights Watch, agrees.
"The Obama administration has carried out 80 strikes in Yemen, if not more. Yet it is only publicly acknowledged two of those strikes - those that killed American citizens. It's as if the hundreds of Yemenis killed in these strikes simply did not exist. What kind of message does that silence send to the Yemeni people?"
Last week, the report of a United Nations investigation found that US drone strikes had killed at least 400 civilians in Pakistan, far more than the US has ever acknowledged.
It accused the US of challenging international legal norms by advocating the use of lethal force outside war zones.
There have been mass protests against US drone strikes in Pakistan.
And at the start of a visit to the US, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has urged the Obama-administration to end them.
"Drone strikes, which have deeply disturbed and agitated our people. In my first statement to the parliament, I had reiterated our strong commitment to ensuring and end to the drone attacks. More recently our political parties in a national conference had declared that the use of drones is not only a continued violation of our territorial integrity, but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts to at eliminating terrorism from our country. This issue has become a major irritant in our bilateral relationship as well. I would therefore stress the need for an end to drone attacks."
The US has defended its drone attacks as legal and just and the best way to counter terror plots against Americans.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has rejected the allegations that the attacks violate international law.
"To the extent these reports claim that the US has acted contrary to international law, we would strongly disagree. The administration has repeatedly emphasized the extraordinary care that we take to make sure counter-terrorism actions are in accordance with all applicable law."
Mr Carney also says drone attacks against terror suspects are less likely to result in civilian casualties than other forms of military action.
"US counterterrorism operations are precise, they are lawful and they are effective. And the United States does not take lethal strikes and we or our partners have the ability to capture individual terrorists. Our preference is always to detain, interrogate and prosecute. We take extraordinary care to make sure that our counterterrorism actions are in accordance with all applicable domestic and international law and that they are consistent with US values and US policy. of particular note, before we take any counterterrorism strike outside areas of active hostilities, there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured and that is the highest standard we can set."
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