The casualties were described as banana farmers by local inhabitants, and appear to have been shot while trying to flee the site of the operation, which officials say targeted members of the al-Shabaab militant group.
Somali intelligence officials say three men detained in the raid on a village in the Lower Shabelle region were senior al-Shabaab militants.
Mohamed Sheikh Mohamud, a farmer in the village of Ma’alinka, south of Mogadishu, said he knew the five men killed. Two were tractor drivers at a banana farm, and three were cattle farmers.
Anisa Abdullahi, a mortuary attendant who inspected the bodies when they were brought into the Medina hospital in Mogadishu the day after the raid, said four of the men died from fatal bullet wounds to the back and one was killed by a wound to the chest.
