20120730
Press TV
US assassination drone strikes have claimed the lives of at least 18 people and wounded 117 others in southern Somalia, Press TV reports.

Sahal Mohamed Gedi, a Somali military official confirmed the news, adding that the aerial strikes took place in Luglow on the outskirts of North Kismayo side on Sunday.

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


Washington claims the airstrikes target militants, though civilians constitute the majority of the victims of such attacks.

The UN has slammed the American terror drone attacks as targeted killing and says they pose a challenge to international law.

The US has recently stepped up its drone operations in the famine-stricken Somalia.

The country 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.