While millions of Americans celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace, agents of the federal government were delivering death by remote control overseas.
On Friday, December 28, for example, five people were killed and three others injured in a U.S. drone attack on a house in the Mana Gurbaz area of the remote and mountainous Shawal Valley in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency.
According to a report filed by Pakistan’s The News International:
Official and tribal sources said the drone fired four missiles and pounded a house in the forest-covered Shawal Valley, sited 90 kilometres northwest of Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan.
Witnesses indicate that “it was for the first time that a drone carried out [a] missile attack in the cloudy and rainy weather in the volatile tribal region.” Chances are it won’t be the last.
One official reports that the death toll from the drone strike could increase if those victims wounded in the attack die as a result of their injuries. “There was heavy snowfall in Shawal [V]alley when the drone fired missiles and targeted a house,” the unnamed official told The News International.
Given the callous and indiscriminate approach of the Obama administration to the names and numbers of those assassinated in the name of “national security,” it is not surprising that “there was no immediate information about the identity of those killed in the drone attack.”
