White House has just revealed that they have killed 2 innocent hostages who were held by Al-Qaeda. Their deaths is a result of a U.S. drone attack.
U.S. drone strikes are so feared in the middle-east and Pakistan to an extent that locals actually fear clear sky and feel secure when it is cloudy as they know drones don’t fly during such weather conditions.
U.S. drone attacks has so far killed close to 2747 innocent civilians in Pakistan over the past 10 years. While the official U.S. reports paints the picture that the killed had questionable character, now that they have killed their own, they have forced to come-out with an official statement.
The two men, American contractor Warren Weinstein and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto, were killed “accidentally” during a strike on a compound on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the intelligence community “had no reason to believe either hostage was present.”
Warren Weinstein, a contractor from Rockville, Maryland, was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2011. In a 2013 video released by his captor, Weinstein pled for his release and urged President Obama to take action.
“Now when I need my government, it seems that I have been totally abandoned and forgotten,” Weinstein said. “You are now in your second term as president of the United States and that means that you can take hard decisions without worrying about reelection.”
Giovanni Lo Porto, a 40-year-old aid worker held by the group since Jan. 19, 2012, was taken hostage in Multan, Pakistan.
He graduated from the London Met in 2010 and had worked on aid projects in the Central African Republic and Haiti.
Lo Porto was kidnapped along with his German colleague, Bernd Mühlenbeck. He was working with German NGO, the Welt Hunger Hilfe, at the time of his abduction.
“No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, according to a White House statement.
The President directed that the information being shared today, which was properly classified until now, be declassified and shared with the American people. He takes full responsibility for these operations and believes it is important to provide the American people with as much information as possible about our counterterrorism operations, particularly when they take the lives of fellow citizens. The uniquely tragic nature of the operation that resulted in the deaths of two innocent hostages is something we will do our utmost to ensure is not repeated. To this end, although the operation was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies, we are conducting a thorough independent review to understand fully what happened and how we can prevent this type of tragic incident in the future.
Now, that U.S. has got its own blood in its hands, hopefully they will put some limitations on the use of drones that has slowly killed 1000s of innocent people while targeting a couple of “suspected” & “unconfirmed” terrorists.
The president is expected to speak at 10 a.m. ET on the incident. You can watch it live below: