38 Westerners killed by US drone strikes, claims BIJ

PESHAWAR: An in-depth analysis by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that 38 Westerners have been killed in the US drone strikes so far in different countries.
These include an American and an Italian whose names were mentioned in an unprecedented announcement Thursday by President Barack Obama.The US President admitted that two al Qaeda hostages, American Dr Warren Weinstein and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto, were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan in January. He also said two other US citizens were killed in a subsequent strike later in the same month.
However, these were not the only Westerners killed by the US in its covert drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.The analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and author Chris Woods has found that seven other US citizens have been killed since the White House launched its covert drone war on suspected terrorists in 2002.
These findings are part of a major investigation into the nationalities of people killed by the US drone war.At least 38 Westerners in total have now been killed by US drones in the three target countries – Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
The 38 Western deaths include 10 Americans, eight Britons, seven Germans, three Australians, two Spaniards, two Canadians, one Belgian or Swiss national, and now one Italian. There have also been four ‘Westerners’ of unidentified nationality.
A press release by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said the research raises serious questions about US policy and the extent to which Western governments have been colluding with the US over unlawful intelligence sharing.
Before Obama’s announcement, the most prominent strike on a Westerner was the one which killed US citizen Anwar al Awlaki, a cleric who became a leading figure and propagandist in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who died in Yemen in September 2011.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has compiled these figures over the past four years through an extensive analysis of thousands of media reports and NGO filings, as well as from court papers and leaked government documents. In all there have been at least 514 US drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen since the first in November 2002. Of the 38 Westerners killed, six are believed to have converted to Islam. At least 18, half the total, were European citizens. We now know two of the 38 were innocent hostages.
The White House statement said the US accidentally killed the two hostages, saying they were unaware Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto were in the building when the strike hit. The US “had no reason to believe either hostage was present,” added White House spokesman Josh Earnest.The two Americans killed in the second January strike in Pakistan were named as al- Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn and Ahmed Farouq, an al Qaeda leader.