Jilib SomaliaSeven incidents of potential civilian casualties are still under review, including one posed to the command by VOA about a strike in Jilib, Somalia, on Feb. 24, 2020. An official with Somali telecommunication company Hormuud Telecom told VOA Somali that one of the company’s employees was killed in that strike and claimed the employee was not involved with al-Shabab. Amnesty International called the report a “welcome glimmer of transparency in more than a decade of deadly military operations.” The rights group urged AFRICOM to offer reparations to the families of the civilian victims and asked the command to look at strikes earlier than the report’s start date of Feb. 1, 2019. AFRICOM made its first acknowledgment of civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in Somalia on April 5, 2019. New information revealed that a woman and child were killed, along with four al-Shabab militants, in a U.S. airstrike near the town of El Burr in central Somalia on April 1, 2018. Harun Maruf contributed to this report.
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