CIA beefs killer drone force

Posted on: Jan. 30th, 2006 || Source: thestandard.com.hk | E-mail Article | Print Article

Despite protests from other nations, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized al-Qaeda.

A failed January 13 bid to assassinate al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" program, a classified initiative that officials say has broadened as the network splintered and fled Afghanistan.

The strike against Zawahiri killed as many as 18 civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered protests in Pakistan. Similar US attacks using unmanned Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

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