Pentagon officials are reporting that the US carried out a drone strike west of the Somali capital city of Mogadishu on Thursday afternoon, targeting people they accused of being al-Shabaab militants, killing “several.”
This is the second recent operation within Somalia in which US officials had a non-specific death toll, in both cases insisting “no civilians” were harmed, but offering no information on the identities of anyone killed.
Pentagon vagueness about attacks, especially drone strikes, is fairly common, but with officials increasingly unwilling to even offer specific numbers of the slain, it seems like the information provided is getting worse and worse.
The lack of names for who was killed is believed to be because little to no effort is made by the military to clearly identify the victims, believing that leaving them as suspects is simpler. That they can’t even offer numbers now may suggest the US is making even less of an effort at post-strike intelligence gathering.
Militant = ANYONE killed by a US drone attack.