US Africa Command (AFRICOM) confirmed on Friday that its forces launched an airstrike near Nuur Dugle, a village in southern Somalia that al-Shabaab captured after a battle with US-backed forces, on December 18.
“The airstrikes occurred in the vicinity of Nuur Dugle, Somalia, approximately 215 km northeast of Mogadishu,” AFRICOM said in a press release.
Somali media initially reported that al-Shabaab took the village on December 18 after fierce fighting and that there were unconfirmed reports of a US airstrike. Al-Shabaab-affiliated media claimed that the group killed 11 government fighters, but the number hasn’t been confirmed by the Somali government.
The Somali Guardian reported that the loss of Nuur Dugle marked a strategic defeat for the US-backed government since it cut off a supply line connecting Mogadishu and central Somalia, according to the Somali Guardian. According to Hiraan Online, the capture of Nuur Dugle means that al-Shabaab has taken control of most of Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region.
Al-Shabaab continues to make advances against the US-backed government despite an unprecedented number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year. The attack near Nuur Dugle marks at least the 117th US airstrike in the country this year, nearly double the previous annual record for US bombings 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.
