In the first hearing on the use of lethal drones by the US military in nine years, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday sought to address long-standing concerns about the number of civilians killed in US air strikes over the past two decades
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Since the previous hearing on the subject - in April 2013 - an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 civilians had been killed as a result of US coalition strikes, according to the monitoring group Airwars, said Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the committee.
"These are not just numbers. These are real people," Durbin added, as he discussed post-9/11 military actions.
"Through it all, 20 years and four administrations, the Department of Justice legal analysis permitting these lethal strikes has remained shrouded in secrecy," the senator said.
The lawmaker's call was echoed by witnesses in attendance, who stressed the need both for greater transparency and greater accountability from the Pentagon and US military.
Radhya al-Mutawakel, the chairperson of Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni-based rights group, said she sent US Central Command (Centcom) 150 pages of documents detailing 12 incidents in which US operations led to the death of 38 civilians, including 13 children.
But in response, Mutawakel added, Centcom said it only acknowledged civilian casualties in two of the reports, and that in both cases compensation for the victims was "not appropriate".
"It is hard to know what will be enough to convince the US military to address the harm it has caused in places like Yemen," she said in her testimony to the committee.
"It is hard to know what will be enough to convince the US military to address the harm it has caused in places like Yemen," she said in her testimony to the committee.
In recent months, the civilian toll of America's "forever wars" in the Middle East has again been in the spotlight after The New York Times released a trove of Pentagon documents showing "deeply flawed intelligence" was used to conduct US-led air strikes, leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Last month, an independent and Congressionally mandated assessment of the Pentagon's protocols and policies conducted by the Rand Corporation found that the US military was not adequately equipped to address civilian casualties or take steps to prevent them.
"Lessons learned from strikes that caused civilian casualties are still not shared across all of the relevant [Department of Defence] organizations in a way that is meaningfully mitigating future civilian casualties," the report found.
