Free Republic

Last week, Amnesty International released a report on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, concluding that as many as 900 civilians might have been killed and 600 seriously injured in the attacks since 2004, when the controversial program began. The United States launched between 330 to 374 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and September 2013, according to the report. And those strikes have created a culture of fear on the ground. "I wasn't scared of drones before," Nabeela, an 8-year-old whose grandmother, Mamana Bibi, was killed by a 2012 drone strike, says in the report. "But now when they fly...

Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif came to Washington this week with a mission — but also with some very bad timing. Under fire at home over the US drone war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the border country with Afghanistan, Sharif told Obama that the US had to stop its remote-control war: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he’d told President Barack Obama on Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes in his country needed to end.The remarks came as the two leaders met in person for more than two hours in high-level talks aimed at beginning to mend a historically troubled...

The head of the Pakistani Taliban was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan on Friday, several security sources told Reuters, -excerpt- Hakimullah Mehsud, who was believed to be in his mid-30s and was one of Pakistan's most wanted men, has been reported dead several times before. But late on Friday, several intelligence, army and militant sources across Pakistan confirmed he had been killed in the drone strike in the lawless North Waziristan region.

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been killed in a drone strike, a high-ranking Taliban official has told the BBC. Mehsud became leader of the Pakistani Taliban in 2009, aged 30, after his predecessor died in a US drone strike.