US Africa Command on Thursday said that it launched an airstrike in Somalia in support of Mogadishu-based government forces who were engaged with al-Shabaab on the ground.
AFRICOM said the strike was launched in a remote area about 9 miles south of the village of Galcad in Somalia’s central Galguduud region, near the border of the Middle Shabelle region. The area is about 150 miles northeast of Mogadishu.
The command said its “initial assessment” found the strike killed five al-Shabaab fighters and claimed no civilians were harmed, but the Pentagon is notorious for undercounting civilian casualties, especially in Somalia.
AFRICOM did not say what day the strike was launched, but the Mogadishu-based government said its ground forces, the Somali National Army, launched a joint military operation with the US in the same area on Wednesday. The Somali Information Ministry claimed 100 al-Shabaab fighters were killed in the fighting.
“In that operation, nearly 100 members of the Khawarij (al-Shabaab), including leaders, were killed, while the place where they were plotting conspiracies was destroyed,” the Somali Information Ministry said, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
The last known US airstrikes in Somalia were reported by AFRICOM on July 9, when the command said 10 al-Shabaab fighters were killed in three separate strikes. Before that, AFRICOM reported a strike on June 2. However, the monitoring group Airwars has said suspected US airstrikes hit al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia on June 11 and June 16, suggesting AFRICOM is not reporting all US bombings in the country.
The US escalated airstrikes in Somalia after President Biden ordered the deployment of up to 500 troops to the country in May 2022. The US-backed government launched an offensive against al-Shabaab in September of last year, leading to heavy fighting on the ground and more US airstrikes.
The US military hypes the threat of al-Shabaab due to its size and al-Qaeda affiliation, but it’s widely believed the group does not have ambitions outside of Somalia. The group’s first recorded attack was in 2007, and it wasn’t until 2012 that al-Shabaab pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda after years of fighting the US and its proxies, including a US-backed Ethiopian invasion that was launched in 2006.
Source: AntiWar.
