Free Republic

The US attorney general has acknowledged four US citizens were killed in drone strikes since 2011. The US specifically targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, Eric Holder wrote in a letter to the Senate judiciary panel. Awlaki's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, Samir Khan and Jude Mohammad were "not specifically targeted by the US". The disclosure of the killings in Yemen and Pakistan marks the first formal public acknowledgement of the US citizen deaths in drone strikes. "The president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified," Mr Holder wrote. 'Continuing threat' America's top law enforcement official...

One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm...

An American drone strike in southern Yemen has killed seven al-Qaida-linked militants, including the media chief for the group's Yemeni branch, Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Bana. Tribal elders in the area also said the dead included Abdul-Rahman al-Awlaki, the 21-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki and four other members of the al-Awlaki clan. The strike was one of five carried out over night by an American drones on suspected al-Qaida positions in Shabwa and the neighboring province of Abyan. The first strike late Friday targeted a house in the Azan district of Shabwa, but hit just after al-Qaida militants had a meeting in...