WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama directly approves strikes against al Qaeda and members of anti-US organisations, deciding on who lives and who is killed, according to a report published in The New York Times.

According to the US-based newspaper, President Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He then personally supervises the drone attacks carried out in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and issues directives in this regard.

Obama holds weekly meetings on counter-terrorism, during which he reviews mug shots and brief biographies of suspected al Qaeda affiliates. The US president nominates the targets based on the overview.

The report said that adult civilian casualties are overlooked and the Obama administration considers all ‘military-age males’ in the vicinity of the strike as combatants.

The report quoted several administration officials as saying that the process “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.

Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants, the reported added mentioning that, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, in his 2010 guilty plea justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”

There have been six drone strikes in Pakistan and 14 in Yemen since April this year.