Bureau of Investigative Journalism: The minimum people confirmed to have been killed by strikes (drone and non-drone) in Yemen, year on year. 150 in 2012
IT WILL NOT BE SAID DEMOCRACY, LAW, AND JUSTICE DIED IN AMERICA WITHOUT A FIGHT. It will be known that there were Americans whose hearts pulsed with blood, who drew breath, and who did -not- coldly sacrifice conscience when PrettyPopular President slaughtered, mutilated and tortured innocent people, citizen and foreigner alike: there were those who would not let go of their humanity, nor would they allow others to pretend Obama’s victims were any less human.
Azzedine Saleh Qaid, 15, witnessed the killing of his father and brother in an airstrike last Oct. 14. Azzedine says he now wants revenge against America for the deaths.
the casualty figures and the reactions of local residents can be checked against the official version of events.
They don’t always match up.
At this particular site, witnesses say the strikes rocked the town in the morning, just as many residents of Jaar were out buying breakfast. Residents say they heard a plane, and a house on the main street was flattened. One man inside died instantly. Dozens of people rushed to the scene.
Residents say the plane circled back and came in low.
“We didn’t think it would come back,” says a witnesses who runs a nearby car repair shop. “Suddenly we see it come back … and shoot again.”
The witness says the second strike killed at least 12 people instantly. “They were cut … in pieces,” he says. A wall where the second strike hit is still covered with blood.
Yemen has demanded the United States to end flying of US drones over towns that have been retaken from Al-AQaeda capture, political sources said on Sunday.
The sources said the US agreed to temporary suspend the flying of its drones over Yemeni towns.
According to an Emirati newspaper, Al-Khaleej, Yemen and the United States agree to end war against Al-Qaeda in those Yemeni areas cleansed from the militants. The sources further said that the Yemeni government told the US Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein its refusal to the continuity of drone raids.
A suspected U.S. drone strike killed last Tuesday two al-Qaida militants in a car in Yemen’s south.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi said early of the current month that Yemen has asked for US drones to be used “in some cases” to target Al-Qaeda leaders in the country. The remark of Al-Qirbi was a first official Yemeni confirmation. In an interview with ABC television’s US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged the use of unmanned drones against Al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen, where such reports had not been confirmed.
The Yemeni army in collaboration with US drones could dislodge Al-Qaeda militants from their main hideouts in Zinjibar, Jaar and Shaqra of Abyan governorate.
More than 150,000 Abyan residents were displaced last year after fleeing the war. They are currently living in shelters in neighboring Aden and Lahj provinces.
Yemen President Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi had vowed to defeat Al-Qaeda and enable the displaced persons to return to their homes.
The orchestrated, systematic mass slaughter of brown muslims cannot be ignored, it cannot be excused, it cannot be met with hand-waving. Fight the pogrom or be complicit with it.
Among those killed that day were 22 children. The youngest, Khadje Ali Mokbel Louqye, was just one year old. A dozen women also died, five of them reportedly pregnant. Yet these numbers mask the many individual families annihilated in the attack. Mohammed Nasser Awad Jaljala, 60, his 30-year-old wife Nousa, their son Nasser, 6, and daughters Arwa, 4, and Fatima, aged 2, were all killed. Then there was 35-year old Ali Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, his wife Qubla (25), and their four daughters Afrah (9), Zayda (7), Hoda (5) and Sheikha (4) who all died. The youngest killed, Khadje Ali Mokbel Louqye, was just one year old. Ahmed Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, 30, was killed alongside his 21-year old wife Qubla and 50-year old mother Mouhsena. Their daughter Fatima, aged 13, was the only survivor of the family, badly injured and needing extensive medical treatment abroad.
STOP BARACK OBAMA’S POGROM: BROWN MUSLIMS ARE HUMAN BEINGS
GENEVA (Reuters) - A Yemeni man working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed by an air strike in Abyan province on Wednesday while carrying out humanitarian work, the agency said.
WAKE UP
“The International Committee of the Red Cross is deeply shocked and dismayed by the death of one of its staff members, Hussein Saleh, who was killed this morning while on duty in the north of Abyan governorate,” the ICRC said in a statement.
[From Rasul Mana’s story] The kids know what the voice of the drone now. Every day we hear the voice of the drones at least six or seven times. We listen for the voice 24 hours a day. We are afraid at night as we lie in our beds. The drones are going around and around over our heads. There may be four or five at any given time. They are normally very high, but sometimes they come down if there is a dust storm or it is cloudy. They also tend to come down lower to attack, which is when you get very scared. When the missile is launched it makes a loud noise – zzhhooo – as it drops onto its target. Many of the strikes are in the black of night. We run to where the attack has happened, we see people dead and crying in pain. No matter what time of night, the children will all be awake and crying. When we look for the injured, or pick up the pieces of the dead bodies, we know that the Americans may do another attack. It’s called a Good Samaritan attack, aimed at anyone who tries to help the injured, as they’re assumed to be friends of the original victims, who are themselves assumed to be militants.
Reports of the drone campaign are so diffuse throughout the media (corporate, mainstream, independent and otherwise) that I don’t bother to keep up with the various articles anymore. But my god: people don’t care.
We are in the age of endless war, and the war state’s ‘justifications’ are so painfully mythological, so thoroughly unsubstantiated not congress, nor the people, nor the courts could ever honestly believe the bullshit the Obama administration spits out. War and the manufactured threat of “terror” have killed American democracy. We are pursuing a policy of insanity, producing not peace or security, but only the assurance the mendacious ‘national security’ narrative will continue:
Each time we hit a family — as we will, with our policy of firing ‘signature strikes,’ CIA’s euphemism for killing people for behaviour that from a drone’s-eye view seems suspicious — how many more will we drive into al Qaeda’s ranks? (from: Deploying killer drones in Yemen will make us all less safe)
