Photo exhibit shows alleged US drone strike deaths

Photographer says he spent 3 years capturing destruction in Waziristan.

ISLAMABAD:

Innocent Pakistanis killed by US drone strikes in the country’s tribal area along the Afghan border is the alleged depiction of a photo exhibit that opened at a London gallery on Tuesday, reported the Associated Press.

“I have tried covering the important but uncovered and unreported truth about drone strikes in Pakistan: that far more civilians are being injured and killed than Americans and Pakistanis admit,” said Noor Behram, a 39-year-old photographer who has worked with several international news agencies.

Behram spent the last three years photographing the aftermath of drone strikes in North and South Waziristan. He managed to reach around 60 attack sites and the exhibit that opened on Tuesday at the Beaconsfield gallery in London features photographs from 28 strikes.

US officials “don’t see that they target one house and along with it, two or three adjoining houses also get destroyed, killing innocent women and children and other totally impartial people,” Behram told reporters in Islamabad on Monday.

The exhibition is sponsored by British rights group Reprieve and the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, an NGO set up by Pakistani lawyer Mirza Shahzad Akbar to help drone strike victims.

The exhibit includes a photo showing an eight-year-old boy allegedly killed in a drone strike in 2009 in South Waziristan, his body surrounded by flowers as it was prepared for burial. Other photos in the exhibit are more gruesome.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2011.