GENEVA (AP) — The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan plunged last year amid growing care to avoid civilian deaths, but the death toll in neighboring Afghanistan continues to rise, the United Nations’ special investigator on counterterrorism said Wednesday.

Ben Emmerson says that for the first time in nine years no civilians were reported killed in 2013 in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Regions, or FATA, a semi-autonomous area along the 2,600-kilometer (1,600-mile) Afghanistan-Pakistan border where militant groups operate.