Geolocation
Airwars assessment
In a major Amnesty International report on civilian harm in Somalia, published in March 2019, the NGO made passing reference to a civilian harm event on August 14th the previous year in the vicinity of Baladul-Rahma and Geeshaan, near Basraa.
According to the report, “on 14 August 2018, the US military conducted additional air strikes in the same twin villages [of Baladul-Rahma and Geeshaan]. Local residents and an NGO monitoring group report that civilians were killed in this strike as well.”
According to footnotes, the claim was supported by a “Report from an anonymous NGO, on file at Amnesty International, also; seven in-person interviews in September 2018.”
During followup correspondence with Airwars, a senior Amnesty researcher noted: “We had a fairly large number of people from the area who were adamant about the day and a few details of the airstrike. We also had the day confirmed by a local NGO, but while they were willing to share some data with us they asked us not to name them, so I won’t.”
The researcher also noted however that AFRICOM had not publicly declared a strike on this date.
No additional English-language sources have so far been identified for this event.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Summary
Sources (1) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention multiple strikes on the twin villages of Baladul-Rahma and Geeshaan. The generic coordinates between these villages are: 2.295726, 45.269251. Due to limited information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.