The Jazeera Beach Massacre was a mass execution that occurred on 15 July 1989, the day after the Mogadishu riots of July 1989. Government forces known as the Red Berets rounded up 47 Isaaq men at random in Mogadishu and transported them to Jazeera Beach, 20 miles south of the city. Upon arrival, the men, handcuffed and defenseless, were ordered into a sandy gorge where the soldiers executed them by firing point blank. Only one young man survived by feigning death and later escaped to Djibouti, becoming the sole witness to the massacre.
The massacre was widely condemned internationally, with analysts highlighting its role in escalating the Isaaq genocide and further fueling the Somaliland War of Independence.
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