US drone strike body count doesn’t add up, rights groups say

US President Barack Obama has signed an executive order intended to prevent civilians from being killed in drone strikes after releasing a death toll.

US military and intelligence agencies have killed as many as 116 civilians in air strikes on militants since Obama took office, the White House said.

Obama ordered US agencies to avoid harming civilians in strikes on terrorists, and said the government would annually report the number of strikes it undertakes and casualty estimates for both civilians and combatants. The White House’s figures were questioned by human rights groups, who said independent assessments had identified many more civilian deaths in the drone campaign.

“This is a powerful tool, one that has been used to great effect and one that has made Americans safer,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of the strikes. But Obama believes the drone campaign “requires a structure” to ensure accountability, and that the public deserves “at least some transparency” about the results of strikes in which civilians are killed, he said.

Between 64 and 116 civilians were killed in 473 US strikes outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria between the beginning of Obama’s presidency and the end of 2015 and they killed as many as 2,581 combatants, the government said. The figures include casualties from strikes by drones and by manned aircraft, but don’t include casualties inflicted by US personnel on the ground.