US Africa Command has announced in recent days that its forces have launched at least seven more airstrikes in Somalia as the Trump administration continues its record-breaking bombing campaign in the country, which receives virtually no media coverage in the United States.
AFRICOM said in a press release that it launched airstrikes in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region on November 26, November 27, and November 28, which it said targeted the ISIS affiliate in a remote mountain region about 37 miles to the southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bossaso.
The command said in another press release that it launched more airstrikes against ISIS in the same area of Puntland on December 1, December 2, and December 3. A separate airstrike that was launched on December 3 targeted al-Shabaab near the village of Kobon in the southern Jubaland region, according to a third AFRICOM press release.
The six days of US airstrikes in Puntland came after the commander of AFRICOM, Gen. Dagvin Anderson, visited the region and called for the war against the ISIS fighters hiding out in caves to be “intensified.” The US has been backing local Puntland forces since the region is not under the control of the Mogadishu-based Federal Government.
The command didn’t specify how many airstrikes it launched, but counting each day as one bombing brings the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to 109, an unprecedented number. President Trump has shattered the previous record for annual US airstrikes in Somalia, which he set at 63 during his first term in 2019.
According to numbers from New America, which tracks the US air war in Somalia, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his entire four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years. President Trump launched a total of 219 during his first term.
The US has been involved in Somalia for decades and has been fighting al-Shabaab since the George W. Bush administration backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a Muslim coalition that briefly held power in Mogadishu after taking the city from CIA-backed warlords.
Al-Shabaab was the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union, and its first recorded attack was a suicide bombing that targeted Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. The ISIS affiliate in Somalia that’s now based in Puntland started as an offshoot of al-Shabaab and first emerged in 2015.
