US airstrikes kill 62 Somalia extremists
The US military says it has carried out six airstrikes in the Gandarshe area of Somalia which killed a total of 62 Al-Shabab extremist rebels.
In a statement issued Monday, the US military’s Africa Command said it carried out four strikes on Dec. 15 in which 34 people were killed and two more on Dec. 16 which killed 28. All the air attacks were in the Gandarshe coastal area south of the capital, Mogadishu, it said.
No civilians were injured or killed in the attacks, it said.
All six strikes were carried out in close coordination with Somalia’s government, it said. The airstrikes were “conducted to prevent Al-Shabab from using remote areas as a safe haven to plot, direct, inspire, and recruit for future attacks,” it said.
Al-Shabab uses parts of southern and central Somalia to plot and direct extremist attacks, steal humanitarian aid, extort the local populace to fund its operations, and shelter radicals, said the statement.
With these attacks, the US military has carried out at least 46 airstrikes so far this year against Al-Shabab, which is allied to Al-Qaeda and Africa’s most active extremist group. Al-Shabab controls parts of rural southern and central Somalia and continues to stage deadly attacks in Mogadishu and other cities.
The US airstrikes have picked up dramatically since President Donald Trump took office and approved expanded military operations in the Horn of Africa nation. Airstrikes also target a small presence of fighters
linked to the Daesh group.
Notorious prison closed amid abuse allegations-
Somalia has closed an underground prison where the government has held extremist suspects and journalists amid allegations of abuses against inmates, the secu- rity minister said Sunday.
Ahmed Abukar said that Godka Jilaow prison, which held hundreds of prisoners including suspected Al-Shabab fighters, would be turned into a technical school. Prisoners would be transferred elsewhere, he said.
The prison, which was run by Somalia’s intelligence agency, has been closed as part of efforts to improve the country’s human rights record, he said.
There were many allegations that prisoners were tortured in the underground cells, according to human rights groups. The prison was used by dictator Siad Barre to jail his critics before he was deposed in 1991.
Many suspects have been held in the prison for years without charges, while others faced military trials, according to rights activists. Military courts in Somalia continue to try a broad range of cases, including terrorism-related offenses, in proceedings that are far short of international standards for fair trials, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
At least 23 individuals were executed in 2017 following military court convictions, the majority on terrorism-related charges, the group said.