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On the 12th December a United States drone mistakenly fired on a convoy of vehicles travelling
to a wedding party in the Yemeni town of Radda, killing as many as 17 people and injuring
around 21 others. This video claims to show the victims of the attack.
Yemeni national security officials said intelligence reports had incorrectly identified the vehicles
as carrying Al Qaeda militants and called the attack a tragic mistake. And even more
tragically the strike was the second one that week to mistakenly target civilians. Well
now the Yemeni parliament has responded to public outrage with a complete ban on US drones.
The ban, which was approved on the 15th December, not only requires US drones to stop attacking
Yemen but also prevents them from entering Yemeni air space altogether. However, the
ban still needs to be approved by the government which has the right to give a reason in not
to carry out but if this does happen then the parliament can still hold a vote of no
confidence in the government and parliament members have already said they are willing
to put pressure on the government. US drone strikes in Yemen have been part of a joint
US Yemeni campaign against Al Qaeda and the Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur had previously
vowed to continue attacks against terror elements until they surrender their arms.This is despite
the fact that US drone strikes in Yemen have mistakenly hit civilian targets several times
in the past two years something the Human Rights Watch says is in violation of international
law.
And in October 2013 Nabeel Khoury a former deputy chief of the US mission in Yemen said
that every US drone killing on an Al Qaeda operative creates 40-60 new enemies of America.
The US President Barack Obama has previously defended the death of civilians in drone strikes.
"Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians and the death toll from their
acts of terrorism against Muslim dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone
strikes. So doing nothing's not an option."