WASHINGTON – The Pentagon admitted for the third time that its bombing campaign against terrorist groups in Somalia, which has been ongoing for more than a decade, had caused civilian casualties there, a military report said Tuesday.
The announcement, made by the United States Command for Africa, confirmed Amnesty International reports that a US airstrike on February 2 in the Somali city of Jilib killed Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar, 18, and wounded his two younger sisters and their grandmother. The strike was aimed at members of the Shabab, an extremist group linked to Al Qaeda.
“Our goal is to always minimize the impact on civilians,” Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, commander of the Africa Command, said in the report. “Unfortunately, we believe that our operations caused the involuntary death of one person and injuries to three others whom we did not intend to attack.”
As is common with almost all US airstrikes in Somalia, a military statement released after the Jilib bombing said that an “initial assessment concluded that the airstrike killed one (1) terrorist. We are currently assessing that no civilians were injured or killed. as a result of this airstrike. “
The African Command’s admission of death follows its slow progress toward better accountability after years of criticism from human rights groups and lawmakers who frequently accused the command of covering up civilian deaths and, at least, Failing to investigate complaints from local residents.
Last year, the African Command pledged to review all military operations in Somalia since 2017. After the review, it admitted the deaths of four other civilians in two different airstrikes in 2018 and 2019.
“Now that there has been an acknowledgment of their actions, there must be accountability and reparations for the victims and their families,” Brian Castner, the chief adviser on arms crises and military operations at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
The US military has carried out more than 180 airstrikes in Somalia since 2017, 42 of them in 2020. Amnesty International has assessed that more than 20 civilians have been killed in a small number of those attacks.
The increase in airstrikes and ground incursions has been attributed to looser engagement rules under the Trump administration, giving commanders more room to find and attack targets for Shabab and the Islamic State.
The military campaign there, like most U.S. conflicts since the September 11 attacks, has stalled at a standstill as Shabab fighters continue to maintain and influence the territory inland as U.S. and allied forces attempt to train and empower local troops to fight for themselves. .
