The U.S. has been covertly engaging in conflicts in Somalia for decades. Amnesty International is accusing the United States of waging a shadow air war in Somalia that is killing civilians with abandon.
The human rights advocacy group studied five of more than 100 strikes on Somalia over the past two years and found that 14 civilians were killed in the attacks. “These five incidents were carried out with Reaper drones and manned aircraft in Lower Shabelle,” Amnesty said in a press release, “a region largely under Al-Shabaab control outside the Somali capital Mogadishu. The attacks appear to have violated international humanitarian law,” the organization said, “and some may amount to war crimes.”
Brian Castner, the group's senior crisis advisor on arms and military operations, claimed, "The civilian death toll we've uncovered in just a handful of strikes suggests the shroud of secrecy surrounding the US role in Somalia's war is actually a smokescreen for impunity."
Amnesty International issued its findings on the African war Tuesday evening in a report titled The Hidden US War in Somalia (pdf).
No comments:
Post a Comment