Details of US anti-terrorism drone war in Africa leaked
It is widely known the US military has been running drone surveillance over Somalia and the Yemen for the past few years (targeting Al-Shabaab and AQAP amongst others) from its Africom Task Force 48-4 command centre at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Leaked documents posted on The Intercept now show that the US has also been running armed and unarmed drones operations from bases in Kenya, Ethiopia and ships patrolling off the coast of East Africa. As we reported last week, the US is currently setting up a new drone base in north-west Cameroon to aid the fight against Boko Haram, which will be its thirteenth known drone base in Africa, with a surveillance range reaching as far north as Libya, covering most of Niger and Chad, as well as its stated target of Nigeria. Meanwhile, Le Point reported yesterday that US Reaper drones, based in Naimey (West Niger) are now patrolling the Libyan-Tunisian border. ﻿

Are drone attacks becoming the face of modern warfare? The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has collected the comprehensive database of reported drone attacks.

It shows hundreds of attacks: up to 337 in Pakistan, largely along the tribal areas of Waziristan, especially in the northern part - something which becomes very obvious in the chart below.

Plus there are another 35-45 recorded in Yemen and up to nine in Somalia.

The data also records the number of deaths, which could be up to 3,247 across the three countries, including up to 852 civilians.

Drone strikes interactive map. Click image to explore it

It comes as the MoD decides to start developing a new generation of armed drones for use in strikes across the world. It has told defence manufacturers it wants their help to develop drones "to provide greater support to maritime operations such as mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare and missile defence".

For the first time, the TBIJ have released its full data as a spreadsheet, for you to download via the Datablog. The full data is below. What can you do with it?

DATA: download the full spreadsheet

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