US reveals drone death toll

President Barack Obama's administration estimated Friday that between 64 and 116 civilians have died during the years 2009-2015 from US drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the same time span, the administration said between 2,372 and 2,581 militants had been taken out by drones.

The information was released as part of an effort by Obama to introduce more transparency into a controversial military tactic that he has defended as necessary to fight terror.

Human rights groups, however, were unsatisfied by the government's disclosed figures, which came in far lower than independent estimates of civilian causalities.

The numbers released Friday included deaths outside established war zones. The administration didn't specify which countries were included, though the military and CIA are believed to have carried out strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and various countries in Africa.

Officials said the disclosure, made in the final months of Obama's presidency, was meant to institutionalise a rigorous reporting process for the next commander in chief.

To that end, Obama signed an executive order Friday tasking future administrations with working in a uniform way to ensure that civilians aren't killed by drones. The order also requires the administration to disclose yearly the civilian deaths from strikes.

Administration officials expressed confidence that Obama's successor would uphold his order.

Some human rights groups dismissed what they asserted was a woefully low estimate of the true number of civilian deaths from US drone strikes.

"Although we welcome this release, it's hard to credit the government's death count, which is lower than all independent assessments," said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "The government continues to conceal the identities of people it has killed, the specific definitions it uses to decide who can legitimately be targeted, and its investigations into credibly alleged wrongful killings."

While the CIA drone program is widely reported upon and even referenced by government officials, it remains classified and individual strikes aren't typically confirmed by the agency.

That's left outside groups -- like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation -- to piece together reports of strikes to account for civilian deaths. Their counts range from 200 to 1,000 civilian deaths.