On Saturday, the United States launched multiple airstrikes against northwestern Somalia’s Golis Mountain range. Details are still coming in, but President Trump, in announcing the attack on Truth Social, said that “many” were killed.
Trump and other officials are reporting the attacks targeted a yet-unnamed “senior ISIS planner.” Trump bragged that former President Biden wouldn’t act quickly enough to kill him “but I did!” There is no report on who this was, or whether he was actually among the slain, details likely to emerge later in the weekend.
Despite criticizing Biden for not acting against Somalia, the former president actually launched at least two sets of attacks in Somalia in just his last month in office. On December 24 they reportedly killed two al-Shabaab fighters in Middle Juba region, and AFRICOM reported in early January that another strike in southern Somalia has killed at least 10.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the new attacks were carried out in coordination of the Somali government, and that there were “no reported civilian casualties.” Reports of civilian bystanders killed in foreign airstrikes in remote parts of Somalia often take several days to emerge, however.
It is noteworthy that President Trump chose to attack ISIS instead of al-Shabaab in this case, as the later has a much larger presence inside Somalia. He insisted today’s killing showed the US was a message that “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!”
In 2021, the Pentagon reported that President Trump had ordered the withdrawal of 700 US ground troops from Somalia, and that there were “significant downsides” to that shift in policy. Throughout the Biden Administration the US continued to carry out large numbers of airstrikes against Somalia, and today’s strikes, the first for the new administration, show that’s likely to continue.
