Only 84 of 2,400 US drone victims in Pakistan militants

The UK Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) revealed that “more than a third” of those described by Washington as militants “were not designated a rank” and “almost 30 percent are not even linked to a specific group,” RT reported Saturday.
 
“Judging by the sheer volume of strikes and the reliable estimates of total casualties, it is very unlikely that the majority of victims are senior commanders,” added the report, citing Mustafa Qadri, the Pakistan researcher for Amnesty International.
 
The Britain-based institution found that only 111 of those killed in Pakistan since 2004 were identified as a “senior” commander of any armed group.
 
Another 73, according to the Naming the Dead project, were middle-ranking members of armed militant groups.
 
According to the report, on October 11, the CIA-operated assassination drones conducted their 400th strike in northwest Pakistan since such operations began there in 2004. In almost a decade, the report added, 2,379 people have been killed.
 
“Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group,” BIJ determined.
 
These figures seriously contradict the claims made by US Secretary of State John Kerry in May, 2013, when he said, “The only people we fire at are confirmed terror targets, at the highest level. We don’t just fire a drone at somebody we think is a terrorist.”