Friday, August 10, 2012
At least five people have been killed and several of others injured in an attack by a US assassination drone in southern Somalia, Press TV reports.
The attack took place in Kismayo, a strategically important port city on Somalia's Indian Ocean coast located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of capital, Mogadishu.
More than two dozen people have also sustained injuries in the attack.
The incident comes while on August 5 another US drone attack claimed the lives of nine people in outskirts of Afmadow, which is on the border with Kenya.
According to Somali Transitional Federal Government military officer Cali Jimcale, the drone attack was launched from a base in Kenya.
The US has recently stepped up its drone operations in the famine-stricken Somalia.
Washington has been carrying out assassination drone attacks in other countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
The US claims that its airstrikes target militants. But, on the ground, civilians have been the main victims.
The United Nations has slammed the assassination drone attacks as targeted killings, saying that they pose a challenge to international law.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, the country remains among the ones generating the highest number of refugees and internally-displaced persons in the world.