The outgoing Obama administration said on Thursday<\/a> the US had conducted 53 strikes outside areas of active hostilities in 2016, killing one non-combatant.<\/p>\n

This contrasts slightly with reports collated by the Bureau \u2013 we recorded 49 counter-terrorism strikes<\/a> in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan in 2016, killing four to six civilians.<\/p>\n

The White House began publishing\u00a0casualty data on its counterterrorism operations<\/a> last year amid calls for more transparency\u00a0from civil society organisations including the Bureau.\u00a0 The numbers are not broken down by country however, making it hard explain differences between official figures and\u00a0our data.<\/p>\n

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) statement did not specify where 2016\u2019s strikes occurred, but said that areas of active hostilities included Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

One of the civilian deaths recorded by the Bureau took place in the restive Pakistani region of Balochistan. According to the victim\u2019s family, a drone hit taxi driver Mohammed Azam while he transported Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour<\/a>, unaware of Mansour\u2019s identity. Azam\u2019s family launched a criminal case\u00a0against the US demanding accountability for his death.<\/p>\n

The Bureau also recorded reports of three civilians killed in an attack<\/a> on what the US described as an al Shabaab camp in Somalia on April 11-12. Witnesses and local officials said the strikes actually hit a village under the control of the militants.<\/p>\n

The Bureau put this version\u00a0of\u00a0events to a Pentagon spokesperson at the time but were told there were no reports of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

The DNI statement said that \u201cno discrepancies\u201d were identified between its post-strike assessments and credible reporting from non-governmental organisations about civilian deaths resulting from these strikes.<\/p>\n

The Bureau recorded the deaths of 362-507\u00a0people<\/a>, including the four to six civilians, as a result of US strikes outside areas of active hostilities last year. The US government put the figure of \u201ccombatants\u201d killed in counterterrorism strikes at 431-441.<\/p>\n

Follow the\u00a0Bureau\u2019s dedicated drone war Twitter feed: @dronereads<\/a><\/em>
Follow the Bureau\u2019s Twitter feed tracking\u00a0each strike when it happens: @latest_strike<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Photo of unmanned US predator aerial vehicle with a hellfire missile attached via US Air Force<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61025,"template":"","tags":[477,471,470,478,481,479,480],"country":[469,437,436,435],"belligerent":[430],"authors":[561],"class_list":["post-61026","news_and_analysis","type-news_and_analysis","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-drone-warfare","tag-stories","tag-tbij-covert-drone-wars-archive","tag-us-civilian-harm","tag-us-legal","tag-us-policy","tag-us-transparency","country-afghanistan","country-pakistan","country-somalia","country-yemen","belligerent-us-forces","authors-jessica-purkiss"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_and_analysis\/61026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_and_analysis"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news_and_analysis"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61026"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=61026"},{"taxonomy":"belligerent","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/belligerent?post=61026"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=61026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}