US Africa Command said in a press release that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region on October 11, as the Trump administration continues to bomb Somalia at a record pace, an air war that gains virtually no coverage in US media.
AFRICOM said the strike targeted the ISIS affiliate in the Golis Mountains about 52 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bossaso. The command offered no additional details as it has stopped sharing information about casualties and assessments of potential civilian harm since April.
“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.
The airstrike marked at least the 82nd time the US has bombed Somalia this year. The Trump administration has shattered the record for annual US airstrikes, surpassing the previous record of 63, which President Trump set in 2019. For context, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years.
Due to the lack of media coverage, it’s unclear what impact the US air war is having on Somali civilians this year. Last month, AFRICOM took credit for an airstrike in the northern Sanag region that killed a prominent clan elder. AFRICOM claimed he was an al-Shabaab weapons dealer, but that was strongly denied by family members and locals who say the victim, Abdullahi Omar Abdi, was known as a peacemaker.
More US airstrikes in Puntland are expected as local US-backed forces in the region announced on October 13 that they were launching a “multi-pronged assault” against ISIS hideouts. On the same day, the Puntland Counter-Terrorism Operations account on Telegram posted photos and videos of the bodies of alleged ISIS fighters who were killed in the operations.
Besides the airstrikes in Puntland, the US has also been backing the Mogadishu-based government in its war against al-Shabaab in southern and central Somalia. The US has been fighting against al-Shabaab since the group first emerged in 2007, a year after the US backed an Ethiopian invasion that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a Muslim coalition that briefly held power in Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab was the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts, and its first recorded attack was a suicide bombing that targeted Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. The ISIS affiliate in Somalia started as an offshoot of al-Shabaab and first emerged in 2015.
