The White House says that two hostages, including an American, were inadvertently killed in Pakistan earlier this year as the result of a United States-launched drone strike.
Senior administration officials told the Wall Street Journal that an attack in January against a suspected Al-Qaeda compound caused the death of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker.
US President Barack Obama is expected to speak on the matter during an address Thursday morning.
According to the Journal’s Thursday morning report, the White House has already launched an investigation into the incident which may prompt the administration to revamp its drone program.
The deaths of the two men, the paper acknowledged, are the first known instances in which a US drone strike has accidentally caused hostage casualties. Previously, the White House has admitted that drone strikes waged by the US in 2011 had killed two suspected members of Al-Qaeda with American citizenship and one of their sons, also a US citizen.
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