Trump’s Africom killing Somali civilians

This 26 August 2017 video about Somalia says, translated from Indonesian:

26 August 2017

Somali forces backed by the United States shot dead 10 residents, including three children in a village. Barire village was attacked … The Somali military says no civilians were killed in the attack.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

10 civilians killed in raid by Somali army and US forces

Monday 28th August 2017

SOMALIA’S army chief of staff admitted on Saturday that 10 civilians were killed in a joint raid with US forces the previous day.

Ahmed Jimale Gedi said he was shocked by the massacre in the village of Barire in the Lower Shabelle region.

The US Africa Command (Africom) confirmed that it had supported an operation by the Somali army in the area.

The Somali Information Ministry had earlier claimed that eight al-Shabab terrorists had been killed in the operation on Friday morning and “no civilians were harmed or killed.”

A second statement late that night said: “It appears that there were different security operations.”

Villagers brought the bodies of the dead to the capital Mogadishu in a protest later on Friday. Lower Shabelle deputy governor Ali Nur Mohamed told reporters there the residents had been killed “one by one” by “foreign troops”.

He said: “These local farmers were attacked by foreign troops while looking after their crops.

“The troops could have arrested them because they were unarmed but instead shot them one by one mercilessly.”

Mr Mohamed said three children, aged eight to 10, and a women were among the dead.

Africom said: “We are aware of the civilian casualty allegations near Barire, Somalia.”

Trump plans to make it easier to kill civilians with drones. Sadly, we can thank Obama for that: here.

US forces carried out three separate drone strikes across Somalia within less than 24 hours last weekend, underscoring the sharp escalation of Washington’s military offensive in the Horn of Africa: here.

AFRICOM envisions two years of open-ended warfare in Somalia: here.

Somali citizens count cost of surge in US airstrikes under Trump: here.

A US airstrike Saturday killed at least 52 people in Somalia, according to the Pentagon. As with all such attacks, the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed that all of the victims were members of the al-Shabab Islamist militia: here.