Which reported Pakistan wedding strikes occurred under Obama and what were the official targets and casualty counts?

1. The December 12 “bride convoy” strike: what was reported and how it was described

Reporting collected by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and summarized by other outlets notes that on December 12 JSOC drones attacked a convoy that was transporting a bride to her wedding, destroying multiple vehicles and causing flying shrapnel that killed up to 15 civilians — described in the coverage as the largest single civilian loss from a U.S. strike in more than a year ^[1]. The account in that source frames the event as an operational action by JSOC rather than a plainly admitted “wedding strike” by U.S. officials; the writeup focuses on the civilian toll and the unusual circumstance — a convoy en route to a wedding — rather than quoting a clear, public U.S. admission that the convoy was the intended target ^[1].

2. Official target claims versus local/NGO casualty tallies

Across the Obama administration’s campaign in Pakistan, official U.S. narratives typically framed strikes as targeting militants or “high‑value” leaders, while NGO and independent media tallies documented higher civilian counts and flagged strikes that hit gatherings such as convoys and homes; this tension is representative rather than limited to the wedding convoy case ^{[2] [3]}. For example, the Bureau’s broader chronology of 2009 strikes documents early Obama-era attacks with disputed civilian counts (Ob1 on January 23, 2009: 7–15 killed, with internal Pakistani estimates suggesting 9–11 civilians among the dead; and Ob3 on February 14, 2009: 25–35 killed with 1–9 civilians reported) and identifies the February strikes as aimed against Pakistan Taliban elements including Baitullah Mehsud’s network ^[4]. The administration’s counting methods and categorizations (for instance treating military‑age males in strike zones as combatants) have been criticized as understating civilian deaths ^[2].

3. Discrepancies in aggregate civilian counts underline uncertainty about individual incidents

Aggregated figures illustrate the depth of disagreement: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimated that Obama‑era strikes in Pakistan killed between 282 and 535 civilians, including roughly 60 children, while U.S. government tallies and some administration commentary suggested far lower civilian counts in some periods ^[2]. The Council on Foreign Relations noted that Obama oversaw hundreds of strikes — some sources count roughly 540 U.S. strikes across theaters — and that early 2009 strikes killed as many as twenty civilians according to some accounts ^[3]. Those divergent bookkeeping approaches matter when assessing specific events like the wedding convoy, because official denials or “high‑value target” claims can coexist with eyewitness and NGO reports of civilian victims ^{[1] [2]}.

4. What can be concluded from the available reporting

Based on the supplied reporting, the December 12 JSOC convoy strike is the clearest example explicitly described as a wedding convoy attack under the Obama presidency, with reported civilian deaths up to about 15 and extensive vehicle destruction ^[1]. Other Obama-era Pakistan strikes documented by NGOs and media include incidents that affected civilians — and in some cases gatherings or homes — but the sources provided do not definitively label additional entries in the Bureau chronology as “wedding strikes,” and official target statements generally describe militants or high‑value targets rather than weddings ^{[4] [2]}. Broad disagreement between official and independent tallies means casualty figures for any single contested incident remain disputed in the record provided ^{[2] [4]}.