Pak analysts, tribals claim U.S. drone strikes to be life-savers, despite official rhetoric

Pakistani analysts and tribals, particularly in the Waziristan region, have claimed that drone strikes launched by the United States at frequent intervals, have actually been life savers, and kept terrorists at bay.

Criticising government inaction in this context, a majority of them said that they never reveal the truth to mainstream media because of threats from the Taliban, CSMonitor reports.

Security experts and non-governmental organization workers in Pakistan's tribal region also admitted that reports on drone strikes in Pakistan are more nuanced than the government admits.

According to the report, drone attacks usually occur in the middle of the night and reporters cannot travel to the exact spots themselves, so they rely on sources from the area, but the source of information itself being the military or the Taliban, cannot be verified.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleged on Tuesday that the U.S. drone strikes were responsible for more civilian casualties in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif has repeatedly called on the Obama administration to stop drone strikes as it poses threat to the nation's sovereignty.

But the U.S. has continuously denied that the air-borne strikes targets the suspected Al Qaeda terrorists hiding in the tribal belt of Pakistan and the borders of Afghanistan.