Daryl Jones

The Herald reports:

A New Zealander killed by a United States drone strike in Yemen has been named by an Australian newspaper as Daryl Jones.

He was identified by The Australian, which said Jones was married with children. According to those who knew him he had lived in Sydney and attended Australia’s largest mosque, the Lakemba Mosque in southwest Sydney.

Jones, who had dual New Zealand and Australian citizenship, was killed last November in a US Predator drone strike on a convoy of al Qaeda militants in Yemen. He was not the target of the strike.

Jones reportedly went by the name of “Muslim bin John” and fought under the name “Abu Suhaib al-Australi”.

Sad for his family, but if you go to a foreign war zone and join a war – then you introduce considerable risk to yourself.

Not many people in New Zealand get killed by predator drones!

The Australian reports:

“They were foot soldiers,’’ the counter-terrorism official said, concerning the role played by the two in AQAP. “And there was a suggestion they were involved in kidnapping Westerners for ransom.’

They were not the targets of the strike. They were collateral damage, which often happens (sadly) in wars.