Al-Shabaab has captured a strategic town in southern Somalia after a fierce battle with US-backed government forces, according to Somali media reports.
According to the Somali Guardian, al-Shabaab militants overran Somali army positions in Nuur Dugle, a village in the Middle Shabelle region. Nuur Dugle is north of Mogadishu, and the report said its capture by al-Shabaab cuts off vital supply lines connecting central Somalia with the capital.
US-backed government forces and allied clans captured Nuur Dugle from al-Shabaab in 2022, and the al-Shabaab victory follows a pattern of the government losing villages it took during that offensive. According to al-Shabaab’s Shahada News Agency, 11 government fighters were killed in the attack on Nuur Dugle, though the group is known to inflate casualties.
The Shahada report said that al-Shabaab’s goal was to “overthrow the Western-backed Somali government, expel international coalition forces, sever the ties of Western hegemony, and establish a comprehensive and independent Islamic Sharia system.”
The Somali Guardian report said that there were reports of airstrikes launched by the Somali government’s “international partners,” likely referring to the US, but they haven’t been confirmed. So far, US Africa Command hasn’t announced any airstrikes in the area on Thursday, but it usually doesn’t confirm strikes until a few days after they were launched.
Al-Shabaab’s capture of Nuur Dugle comes despite the US providing the government with unprecedented air support. So far, the US has launched at least 116 airstrikes in Somalia this year, shattering the previous record for annual airstrikes in the country, which President Trump set at 63 during his first term in 2019.
A little more than half of the US airstrikes targeted an ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, but the number of airstrikes targeting al-Shabaab still marks a major escalation, as the US launched just 10 airstrikes in Somalia in 2024.
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 in 2007 that targeted Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. It wasn’t until 2012 that the group pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda. The ISIS affiliate in Puntland started as an offshoot of al-Shabaab and first emerged in 2015.
