On Thursday, US officials say they carried out an airstrike in central Somalia’s Hiran Region, killing at least 26 people. As usual, the statement identified everyone slain as “al-Shabaab fighters” but did not elaborate on who they were.
This strike came just hours before the al-Shabaab attacks in Mogadishu
on Thursday night, which started an all-night gun battle that killed
dozens. It was the third US airstrike this week in Hiran as well, with
81 killed total over them.
It’s unclear if there is any connection between the Hiran strikes and
the Mogadishu attack, beyond them both being part of the same
open-ended, increasingly escalating war. The US has been carrying out a
growing number of airstrikes against Somalia over the past two years.
2019 appears to be well on its way to breaking all records on strikes,
with 24 strikes in Somalia reported in just the first two months, more
than half the number of strikes carried out over the course of the whole
year of 2018. Death tolls are soaring too, with dozens killed in
virtually every strike this year, compared to a lot of single-digit
casualties in 2018.
US officials are crediting the soaring death toll with unnamed “partner
forces,” who it says are making gains in Hiran area and providing better
intelligence on what the US is actually hitting. Despite these claims,
there haven’t really been reports on the ground of a lot of offensives
anywhere near Hiran in recent months.
Skip to content
Original and up-to-date news