#NOT A BUG SPLAT

The first ever Cannes Lions Award for a Pakistani agency. Congratulations!

A civilian was reported killed in a suspected US drone strike in Yemen yesterday – the first civilian casualty in the secret drone war reported in 2014.

Drones reportedly killed a farmer yesterday, witnesses said, though he has yet to be identified.

Unnamed officials told local media the attack killed an al Qaeda member. However witnesses and other Yemeni officials confirmed a civilian was also killed.

The strike apparently targeted a vehicle carrying three alleged al Qaeda members. It appears drones firedthree missiles at the vehicle, injuring as many as two of the al Qaeda men, according to witnesses and Yemeni officials.

This is the third strike so far this year in Yemen and the second to hit the sparsely populated province of Hadramout in the country’s south east.

The farmer, who was not in the vehicle, was hit by shrapnel. Some reports said he was blown into pieces by the force of the blast.

In May last year President Obama set out rules governing drone strikes. The president said: ‘Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.’

In the same speech the president also said the new rules would constrain the drone programme. But Bureau analysis of the six months after the speech found the overall death toll from drone strikes in this period increased compared with the six months before. This is despite the number of strikes decreasing over the same period.

Related article: New analysis questions constraint on US drone strikes

The latest reported civilian casualty in Yemen comes days after US officials said the administration will be investigating a December 12 2013 strike on a wedding party in Yemen that killed 6-15 civilians. It also emerged that it was a military strike, carried out by the shadowy US special forces group: the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

That strike contributed to the highest ever civilian casualty rate – the number of civilians reported killed on average in each confirmed drone strike – last year in Yemen, where JSOC and the CIA fly lethal drone strikes.

Related article: A changing drone campaign: US covert actions in 2013

Conversely, 2013 saw no confirmed civilian casualties reported in Pakistan, where the CIA is running the strikes. The civilian casualty rate has been falling in Pakistan since a peak in 2009. Five years ago the CIA was killing on average almost two civilians per strike.

Afghan Officials: NATO Air Strike Killed 9 Civilians (Including Women & Children

Afghan officials have said an apparent Nato air strike has killed 15 people – nine of them civilians, including women and children – in an eastern province where the Taliban remain strong. Nato said 10 militants (which is vaguely defined by the Obama Administration as males of ‘military-age to prevent civilian casualty counts) had died in the strike, and that it had no reports of any civilian deaths.

The Kunar province police chief Abdul Habib Sayed Khaili said the air strike had hit a pickup truck carrying the women and children in Qoro village soon after three Arab and three Afghan militants boarded it on Saturday evening. He said some reports had called it a drone strike, but that Afghan officials had been unable to confirm that. Of the 15 dead, four were women, four were children and one was the driver, the police official said.

The Watapur district chief Zalmai Yousefi confirmed the air strike. He also said 15 people had been killed, including women and children.

The Nato spokeswoman 1st Lieutenant AnnMarie Annicelli confirmed that the military alliance had carried out a “precision strike” that killed 10 “enemy forces”, but that it had received no reports of any civilians dying in the air strike. Annicelli had no immediate details on who exactly the dead were or what prompted the strike.

Even as US-led foreign forces draw down their presence in Afghanistan, with a full exit expected by the end of 2014, the air support they provide to Afghan troops in many regions is still a crucial part of operations against the Taliban.

Past strikes that killed civilians have infuriated Afghans. The president, Hamid Karzai, has spoken out forcefully against them and banned Afghan troops from requesting Nato air strikes during operations in residential areas.

As the violence in Afghanistan has spread, civilians are increasingly getting caught up in the conflict.