The US military has conducted airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) operatives in Somalia, the first attacks in the African country during Donald Trump’s second term as president.
The strikes were carried out against IS-Somalia in the Golis Mountains, in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern Puntland region. IS-Somalia splintered from al-Shabaab in 2015, a much larger and better known jihadist organisation affiliated with al-Qaida, which controls parts of southern Somalia.
Trump said on Saturday that he ordered strikes on a senior IS attack planner and others from the organisation.
The president wrote in a post on Truth Social: “These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies.
“The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.
“Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did!
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’”
Trump did not identify the IS figure or state whether they were killed in the attack. TheUS secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth added that an initial assessment indicated multiple operatives were killed. He said no civilians were harmed.
Hegseth said the strikes degrade IS’s ability “to plot and conduct terrorist attacks” threatening the US, its partners and innocent civilians.
“[It] sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border-protection and many other operations under President Trump’s leadership,” he said.
Estimates for the total number of active members in IS-Somalia have varied widely, but UN, US and Somali government officials believe it has about 300 to 700 members, approximately half of whom are believed to be foreign fighters who have entered Somalia.
The Puntland regional government has been involved in its own month-long operation against IS-Somalia following a deadly attack it carried out against its security forces in December.
A Puntland official told the Guardian that its forces “had been involved in a low intensity conflict with the group for almost a decade and have cleared more than 200km of territory of their presence since this operation began”.
In a post on social media, Puntland thanked the US and the United Arab Emirates for their support.
The Somalian president’s office said that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was informed about the US military action targeting senior IS leadership in northern parts of the country.
“He acknowledges the unwavering support of the United States in the fight against international terrorism and welcomes the continued commitment under the decisive leadership of president Donald Trump,” the office said in a post on X.
The strikes took place a day after the Somali president made an appeal to Trump in an interview with the Washington Post to “not to pull out the American advisers and consultants who are supporting the training of our special forces”.
Trump has opposed the deployment of US troops and the use of US military assets in faraway conflicts, and withdrew US troops from Somalia in 2020 relying primarily on airstrikes to degrade jihadist organisations operating in Somalia. He has ordered more airstrikes in the country than any other US president.
A strike, which also targeted IS militants, was carried out in coordination with Somalia last year and killed three members of the group, the US military said.
After the strikes US officials briefed media saying that they targeted Abdulqadir Mumin, who they said quietly became IS’s global leader but experts have expressed doubt that he held such a senior role.
