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US terror drones kill 24 more in Somalia

06 November 2011 04:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. At least 24 Somalis have been killed in a US assassination drone attack near the country’s border with Kenya, APA reports quoting Press TV.

The remotely-controlled drones launched an aerial attack on the town of Kuda along the coast of Kismayo, a strategically-important port city located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu on Saturday evening.

The attack followed two similar US assassination strikes against Bardera city and Burdhubo town in the southern Gedo region. At least 75 people were killed and over 80 others wounded in the two strikes.

Somalia is the sixth country, where the United States has used the aircraft to launch deadly missile strikes. The US military has also used the drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen.

On October 28, Washington admitted to flying unmanned aerial vehicles from Somalia’s western neighbor of Ethiopia.

"The US has unarmed and unmanned aircraft at a facility there (Ethiopia) to be used only for surveillance as part of a broad, sustained integrated campaign to counter terrorism," said the Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby.

The confirmation came a day after The Washington Post revealed in a report that the US flied ’armed’ drones from an airfield in Ethiopia’s southern city of Arba Minch.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally-displaced persons in the world.