Report Provides Details of Yemen Drone Strike on Wedding Convoy
Assault doesn't seem to comply with president's policy on drone use
A new report on the U.S. drone missile strike that killed 12 members of a Yemeni wedding convoy has renewed calls for the Obama administration to make public its own investigations into the incident — and explain how such strikes are consistent with international laws of war.
The detailed, 28-page report from Human Rights Watch describes conflicting accounts of the December 12 attack, but nevertheless concludes that some, if not all, of the victims may have been civilians.
The laws of war prohibit attacks on civilians that are not discriminate or attacks that cause civilian loss disproportionate to the expected military advantage.
The report also calls on the U.S. government to explain how the attack could possibly have complied with the new policies President Obama announced in May 2013, and repeated less than three months before the wedding strike, that he had "limited the use of drones so they target only those who pose a continuing, imminent threat to the United States where capture is not feasible, and there is a near certainty of no civilian casualties."