Though the hour was late, Yemen’s social media was still very much awake.

A U.S. drone's missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants.

The attack – like all other U.S. drone strikes outside warzones – was supposed to be clandestine. Yet within minutes Sanaa-based lawyer Haykal Bafana was reporting the strike in almost-realtime. Just after 1am on May 17 he posted the following on Twitter:

"#Yemen NOW | Missile strike on car in Wadi Hadhramaut. Near city of Shibam. Suspected US drone attack."

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As Bafana later explained to the Bureau, his relatives live in Shibam, a town of 30,000. "When the drone struck, the town – which was then experiencing a power cut – had completely lit up. My relatives got straight on the phone to tell me about the attack."

The day prior to the strike Bafana had already tweeted that drones were behaving suspiciously in the area. Hadhramaut province, a sparsely-populated former sultanate, is far from Yemen’s troubled south, where most of the fighting and U.S. drone strikes are currently taking place.

More stories from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

There has been militant activity there for some years, report locals, and surveillance drones have been active at night since 2010. But until now there had never been a drone strike. "But suddenly four or five days ago, my relatives were reporting drones over them in daylight, all the time, which was rare. Militants were also being seen moving about in the area, maybe preparing the way for an evacuation from the fighting in the south. Everyone was expecting something to happen," Bafana recalls. He tweeted the news to his followers.

"#Yemen | Hearing multiple claims of drone sightings in Hadhramaut, especially in Shibam/Qatn directorates (KSA route). No attacks so far."

When the deadly attack finally came in the early hours of Thursday morning, the target itself was hardly a secret.

Earlier, Arabic-language online media in the provincial capital of al-Mukalla had reported that a convoy of alleged al Qaeda rebels was heading north. That news was also swiftly tweeted.

Precision strike
Others were clearly also charting the convoy’s progress. As the vehicles approached Shibam at around 1am local time, at least one car, a Toyota Hilax, was destroyed by missiles from above. Yemen’s own air force has neither the know-how nor the equipment to launch a precision strike on moving vehicles in the dark.

News agencies would later report the attack as a drone strike, naming two of the dead as Zeid bin Taleb and Mutii Bilalafi, both described as local al Qaeda leaders. Like the dozens of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen that preceded it, Thursday’s attack was supposed to be secret. Yet Twitter and other social media were tracking in near-real time the events surrounding the operation.

US official acknowledges drone strikes, civilian deaths

"It is incredible how the same type of technology used by the CIA to kill people with drones in the Yemen, is empowering the Yemenis to tweet the attacks as they are happening," Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics at the University of Sheffield told the Bureau.

"They can send us all pictures and bring us closer to the horror they are experiencing. Technology in the small may eventually bring down the over-use of military technology in the large."

Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter – which played an important role in Yemen’s Arab Spring uprising – are now being used by activists to draw attention to a large increase in U.S. drone strikes in recent weeks.

'Twitter is increasingly important'
As Haykal Bafana notes, within minutes of his tweeting Monday’s attack the news was also posted on Facebook and on local Arabic micro-news sites. "Web use is as low as 2 percent here in Yemen. But it still makes a big difference. Many people get their news from the small local media sites rather than from foreign or state agencies. And Twitter is increasingly important."

When President Obama’s chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan visited Sanaa on Sunday,  Twitter witnessed an online protest with the hashtag NoDrones.

"Brennan do you hear us?!!! We say #NoDrones #NoDrones #NoDrones. You are killing innocent people and creating more enemies in #Yemen."

'Stooge': Al-Qaida chief al-Zawahiri issues message on Yemen

Yemen-based youth activist Sadam al-Adwar (@sadamtweety), for example, said: "I’m against #terrorism & #extremism, i’m also against #drones. It’s counter-productive & fuels more extremism."

And @WomanFromYemen, otherwise known as NGO consultant Atiaf al-Wazir, told her more than 8,000 followers: "For every headline you read regarding 'militants' killed by drones in #Yemen, think of the civilians killed that are not reported. #NoDrones."

Yesterday’s Yemen drone strike appears to be the first in which events were reported on in real time.

"I’ve never heard of an example of people tweeting while drones were actually in the area," said Dr Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Policy, an expert on Yemen security issues.

"It really gets to the myth that you can keep these strikes covert, and if you do not have an information campaign that supports their use, you leave yourself flat-footed by people reporting what is being done in real time."

Army working on hovering, non-lethal drone-bazooka

There is a precedent. Last year a Pakistani man unknowingly tweeted the presence of U.S. Special Forces attack helicopters on the way to kill Osama bin Laden. On May 1 last year Pakistani IT consultant Sohaib Athar tweeted the following.

"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

After a "huge window shaking bang" he debated the significance of the night’s events on Twitter, even as U.S. Special Forces carried out their controversial raid. He quipped to a follower that "moving to Abbottabad was part of the 'being safe' strategy."

But as the news of bin Laden’s death broke Athar lamented: "Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

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White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan on Monday spoke openly -- and at great length -- about what has long been one of the government’s most controversial official secrets:  the use of remotely piloted drones to kill suspected terrorists.

In doing so, he became the first U.S. government official to acknowledge that the drone strikes sometimes kill innocent people, though he characterized such deaths as  “exceedingly rare.” But a new analysis by an independent Washington think tank estimates that more than 300 civilians have been killed by drones since President Barack Obama took office.

In a major speech on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death during a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs, Brennan proclaimed that al-Qaida is now "on the path to its destruction."  But the headline was what he had to say about the drone program — long a forbidden subject for senior U.S. officials  — and how the U.S. government uses it.

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“The United States conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones,” said Brennan, in his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank.  

While it has been openly reported in the press for years, the use by the CIA of pilotless drones to kill members of al-Qaida has long been officially classified,  prompting government officials to talk obliquely about “lethal operations” and “removal” of terrorists. They have done so even as Obama has dramatically escalated the number of such attacks and made them the central component of the administration’s counterterrorism efforts.

One U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News that the speech represents “a pretty big sea change for us” in terms of what officials will now be permitted to talk about. But the official said that while Brennan’s speech had been carefully vetted throughout the U.S. intelligence and national security community, there had been no formal declassification of the drone program. “The president can declassify anything he wants,” said the official, adding that Brennan – as the representative of the president — can speak about anything his boss wants him to discuss.   

Under Obama, there have been an estimated 250 drone strikes in northwest Pakistan that have killed as many as 2,345 people, according to an analysis by the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank that closely tracks the program. Such strikes have generated a storm of protest in Pakistan and stepped up demands by the Pakistani government to halt them.   

In what he described as an effort to be more open with the American people, Brennan on Monday described an elaborate process under which senior government officials select targets for drone strikes. They must first determine whether a prospective target is a bona fide member of al-Qaida or “associated forces” and poses a “significant threat” to U.S. interests.  The “lethal action” strikes are not used for “punishing terrorists for past crimes” or “seeking vengeance.” Instead, they are used to “stop plots” and “prevent future attacks,” citing as one example, targeting individuals  who possess “unique operational skills.”

Read more reporting by Michael Isikoff in 'The Isikoff Files'

Brennan  said the use of drones gives U.S. intelligence agencies the ability to use “laser-like” precision against the terrorists. But he acknowledged that "innocent civilians have been killed in these strikes." He said such instances have been "exceedingly rare, but it has happened.

“When it does, it pains us and we regret it deeply, as we do any time innocents are killed in war," he added. 

That passage of his speech alone was significant. In June 2011, Brennan said that in the previous year of operations in the government’s then-unspecified program to eliminate al-Qaida members, “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.”   

Brennan later changed that statement in response to questions by the New York Times, spurred in part by  reports about a May 6 strike in Pakistan that  hit a religious school, an adjourning restaurant and a house, killing 18 people. Although 12 militants were allegedly killed, British and Pakistani journalists on the scene reported that six civilians also died in the strike.

In Brennan’s adjusted statement last year, he said, “Fortunately, for more than a year, due to our discretion and precision, the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral deaths resulting from U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Brennan did not give any details on Monday about how rare civilian deaths have been. But according to the analysis by the New America Foundation, which relies heavily on local media and other reports from observers in Pakistan, about 17 percent of those who have been killed by drones since the program effectively began in 2004 were “non-militants.”  The foundation estimated that the  “non-military fatality rate” has since dropped to about 13 percent under Obama – as drone strikes have become more frequent and more precise.

Those numbers translate to 471 civilian deaths, including 309 under Obama.

Human rights groups — who have challenged the administration to be more open about its drone program — were not satisfied with the new details provided by Brennan’s speech.

“It is not enough that care is taken to avoid harm to innocent civilians,” said Raha Wala, an official with Human Rights First. “Brennan's assertion that any 'member' of al-Qaida or 'associated forces' is legally targetable is wrong. Under the laws of armed conflict, only members of the enemy's armed forces, or those directly participating in hostilities or who perform a continuous combat function, may be targeted.”

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