The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP, earlier known as North West Frontier Province), the militant hub in terror-engulfed Pakistan, are now the location of an ever-increasing cycle of Drone attacks by the United States (US). In the latest wave of such attack, at least 13 Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants, including ‘commander’ Amir Moaviya, were killed, and six others were injured, when a US Drone struck a Hujra (guesthouse) of a tribesman's compound at Eisori village near Mirali, a town in North Waziristan Agency (NWA), on August 14, 2010. Earlier, on July 25, at least 24 persons, a majority of them believed to be local tribal militants, were killed in South Waziristan and North Waziristan Agencies. The US conducted its first Drone attack in Pakistan on June 18, 2004, at Wana, the regional headquarters of the South Waziristan Agency (SWA), killing five tribal militants.
Reports indicate that missile attacks by US Drones in the FATA have more than tripled since January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took over the Presidency in USA. According to a BBC Urdu Service report published on July 24, 2010, there were 25 Drone strikes between January 2008 and January 2009 in which slightly fewer than 200 people were killed. Between January 20, 2009, and the end of June 2010, there were at least 87 such attacks, killing more than 700 people.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database records that both the number of Drone attacks and casualties have been rising every year, with the exception of 2006, in which there was no such incident recorded. While only one person was killed in a single incident in 2005, the number of fatalities increased to 20 in 2007, in a single attack. In 2008, 156 persons were killed in 19 such incidents. Year 2009 became bloodier, with 46 such incidents killing 536 persons. The first seven months of 2010 have already seen 41 such incidents and 366 fatalities.