Senior al Qaeda leader Faruq al Qatani was killed in a “precision strike” on October 23 in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, the Pentagon has confirmed. A second strike that day is believed to have killed Bilal al Utabi, another senior al … Continued
The deaths amount to the biggest confirmed loss of civilian life in a single American strike in Afghanistan since the attack on the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz last October.
Figures released to the Bureau provide firm evidence the US has intensified its fight against the Taliban despite officially ending combat operations against the group in 2014.
See Get the data: Drone wars for up to date figures on drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
For information on how we compiled the data, see themethodology.
The conflict as a whole killed and injured more than 11,000 civilians in total last year, of which 3,512 were children.
Experts say rising civilian casualties are the result of an anomalous situation where the US is pursuing a conventional aerial campaign against the Taliban with virtually no troops on the ground to provide reliable intelligence to guide it.
The full feature on what happened in Khost on June 5 2015.
UN and US data show leap in civilian casualty rate from airstrikes in Afghanistan.
Dataset: Nato may have stopped combat operations but the war in Afghanistan continues apace
