US military admits to killing civilians in Somali airstrikes

The United States military has admitted for the first time that it killed two Somali civilians in one of its airstrikes in the African country's central El Burr region.

The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) had for a long time insisted that it was only taking out “terrorists” in its alleged precision strikes in Somalia.

However, it admitted in a Friday statement that an internal review of the airstrikes had found hints at civilian casualties in Aoril last year.

“During a commander-directed review of airstrikes conducted in Somalia since 2017, US Africa Command learned an April 1, 2018, airstrike killed two civilians," read the statement.

"The April 2018 airstrike was designed to degrade the al-Shabaab terrorist group near El Burr, Somalia. In the airstrike four al-Shabaab militants also were killed," it added.

The statement noted that a previous report on the airstrike, which stated five alleged terrorists had died in the attack, was not correct. The AFRICOM insisted that the error in reporting and assessment was an "isolated occurrence."

"Because of the reporting error, US Africa Command was not informed of the assessment's conclusion -- and subsequently the information was not reported to external authorities, such as the host nation and Congress," AFRICOM said in its statement.

The force said it had notified the Somali government of the casualties. The statement gave no further details of the civilians killed in the airstrike.

AFRICOM also denied any relations between the casualties and a report by Amnesty International around the same time of the attack.

Amnesty International had reported civilian casualties in US airstrikes before the April raid took place. However, AFRICOM had insisted back then that its attacks followed a firm "zero casualties" policy.

US airstrikes, described as "unlawful killings," could well amount to "war crimes", according to Amnesty.  The London-based rights group believes that AFRICOM's civilians death report understate the real numbers recorded by investigators based on eyewitness reports.

Last month, Amnesty reported that 14 civilians had been killed in only five US airstrikes that they had examined out of a total 110 missile strikes.

SS