US forces have not adequately investigated a February 2 strike killing one woman at her home, and a March 10 attack that killed five men and a child in a minibus.
"The US military has not seriously investigated two recent airstrikes in Somalia in which civilians were killed and wounded in apparent violation of the laws of war," said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
Between February and May, Human Rights Watch interviewed 14 people by phone, including relatives of those killed in the February and March strikes - four of whom visited the scene in its immediate aftermath - and assessed publicly available information about the airstrikes.
In its initial quarterly report on civilian casualty assessments published on April 27, 2020, AFRICOM said it examined 20 alleged airstrikes that caused civilian casualties between February 2019 and March 2020 and was still investigating 7 additional incidents, 2 of which Human Rights Watch investigated.
On the evening of February 2, at least one airstrike hit a home in Jilib, a town in the Middle Juba region, instantly killing a woman possibly between age 18 and 20 and injuring her two sisters, both children, and her grandmother.
