MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – Somalia’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, Abdisaed Muse Ali, accused Turkey on Thursday of carrying out a “massacre” of Somali nationals on Puntland’s coast, escalating a row over a drone strike that killed four suspected pirates near Garmaal, in the northeastern region’s Nugaal area.
“The massacre of Somali citizens on Puntland’s coast is a brutal act of aggression that the Turkish government has injected into Somalia’s politics,” Ali said in a post on X.
He reserved further criticism for Puntland’s own leadership, saying regional authorities had failed to publicly address the deaths in Garmaal. “What troubles me even more is that Puntland’s current leadership sits in office yet has never once spoken about the youth massacred in Garmaal,” he added.
Daily Somalia and other local outlets reported on Tuesday that the four dead men were suspected pirates believed to have taken part in the hijacking of the cargo vessel Lutuf a day earlier, and had taken a small boat toward the shore to gather supplies when they were struck.
That account has since been challenged. Residents in the area now say the four were innocent fishermen killed in cold blood, with no connection to the Lutuf hijacking or any act of piracy. Puntland’s regional administration has issued no official statement either confirming the men’s involvement in piracy or clarifying whether those killed were civilians, leaving the competing accounts unresolved.
Turkey has not responded to the accusation that it carried out the strike or that it killed civilians. Ankara has a longstanding practice of not publicly discussing its airstrikes in Somalia and has never claimed responsibility for individual strikes, maintaining silence even in cases where its drones are reported to have killed dozens of civilians.
Anger over civilian casualties from Turkish airstrikes has been building in Somalia. Days before the Garmaal strike, footage circulated on social media showing residents burning a Turkish flag in protest, accusing Ankara’s strikes of killing livestock and rural herders in Southwest State. Turkey has not responded to that incident either, continuing a pattern of silence on strikes local communities describe as deadly.
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