Pentagon Admits to Civilian Casualties in Somalia for a Third Time

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has admitted for the third time that its bombing campaign against terrorist groups in Somalia, which has been underway for more than a decade, had caused civilian casualties there, a military report said on Tuesday.

The announcement, by United States Africa Command, substantiated reports by Amnesty International that a U.S. airstrike on Feb. 2 in the Somali town of Jilib killed Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar, 18, and injured her two younger sisters and grandmother. The strike was targeting members of the Shabab, an extremist group linked to Al Qaeda.

“Our goal is to always minimize impact to civilians,” Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the commander of Africa Command, said in the report. “Unfortunately, we believe our operations caused the inadvertent death of one person and injury to three others who we did not intend to target.”

As is common with almost every U.S. airstrike in Somalia, a military statement released after the Jilib bombing said an “initial assessment concluded the airstrike killed one (1) terrorist. We currently assess no civilians were injured or killed as a result of this airstrike.”