An anonymous building, an indistinguishable town, an innocent child – which would a drone strike hit?
A giant portrait of a child, designed to be captured by satellites, has been unveiled by artists in Pakistan in an attempt to "save innocent lives" and put a face to the deadly attacks.
The poster, measuring 90 by 60 feet and made of vinyl, was unrolled with the help of locals two weeks ago in a village in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in northwest Pakistan, where residents say attacks by the pilotless aircraft are a part of daily life.
Amnesty International suggest 900 people have been killed by strikes in Pakistan since 2004, including 330 children.
"Although there is awareness for drone attacks, it’s rarely humanised," a representative for the artist collective wrote in an email to Yahoo News. "This installation is our attempt at showing that."
The unidentified girl is said to have lost her two siblings along with both her parents in an attack.
According to the group, the project "was inspired after learning that drone operators refer to kills as ‘bug splats,'" since "viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed," says a post on the project's website, NotaBugSplat.com.
"Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face."