(Previous Incident Code: Ob205 )

In a confirmed US strike, up to 18 people were killed, reportedly including six civilians, and another four were inured, as a vehicle was struck in Dwa Tooe, north Waziristan, local and international media reported, though the US denied the civilian harm allegations.

In the strike, the first following Osama bin Laden’s death, a US attack took place on a vehicle carrying “explosives and nearly ten armed men,” according to a US official in August 2011, although at the time reports claimed the target was a religious school (and suspected militant hideout). The attack also hit a nearby unrelated roadside eatery and a house.

Reports, who put the death toll between seven and 18, where conflicting in terms of whether militants or civilians were killed in the strike – or both. Dawn, for example, who put the death toll at 17, claimed that only militants were killed.

However, US Today said the at least one civilian was killed while others said that six civilians were among the fatalities. As part of an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in 2011 into CIA claims that its drones were no longer killing civilians, its researchers in Waziristan reported: “The total number of people killed was 18. Six were civilians while the rest were stated to be militants.” TBIJ identified the six civilian victims by name, all listed below.

A US official subsequently commented on these TBIJ findings:

“The claim that a restaurant was struck is ludicrous. This was a vehicle carrying explosives and nearly 10 armed men, which was engaged in a remote area just a couple miles from the Afghanistan border. There’s no question where they or the explosives were headed — let’s remember that the goal here is protect the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans who would otherwise be killed by these militants.”

TBIJ pointed out that the US official states that it killed “nearly 10 armed men,” as its  researchers – along with the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post and others at the time – all report a significantly higher death toll than 10 in this strike. TBIJ provided the CIA with the names of those civilians identified as killed and asked for specific comment. As of February 2013, the Bureau was still waiting for a response.

Finally, in February 2012 an independent investigation by Associated Press during which local people were questioned about this and other strikes, again confirmed that six civilians were killed in the attack along with ten Taliban.

It should moreover be noted that in January 2014, TBIJ published an internal Pakistani record of CIA drone strikes that listed seven Punjabi militants killed in this attack.