US Africa Command on Tuesday announced that its forces launched an airstrike in Somalia a day earlier that targeted al-Shabaab about 30 miles to the northeast of Kismayo, a port city in the southern Lower Juba province.
AFRICOM offered no other details of the bombing, which marks at least the 29th US airstrike in the country this year, as the Trump administration continues bombing the country at a record pace.
The US-backed Somali Defense Ministry said that on Tuesday, the Danab, a special operations force armed and trained by the US, and local Jubaland forces conducted an operation against al-Shabaab near Jamame, the same area around where the US airstrike was launched.
But al-Shabaab told a much different story about clashes on Tuesday, claiming in a statement published by its Shahada News Agency that its fighters ambushed a military convoy of US and Somali forces. The militant group claimed that its fighters killed 37 people without specifying whether any Americans were killed.
Al-Shabaab is known for inflating casualty figures and has previously claimed to have killed Americans when AFRICOM said no US forces were harmed. Antiwar.com has asked AFRICOM about the al-Shabaab claim and has yet to receive a reply.
Al-Shabaab claimed back in September 2025 that it killed Americans in an attack on an airport in Kismayo that houses US troops, but AFRICOM refuted the claim and said US forces came under an “indirect attack” without providing any other details.
The US has been involved in Somalia for many decades and has been fighting against al-Shabaab since it first emerged following a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a coalition of Muslim groups that briefly held power in Mogadishu, and led to the creation of the current government.
The US has also been launching heavy airstrikes in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region against an ISIS affiliate, which first emerged in 2015 as an offshoot of al-Shabaab. Last year, AFRICOM launched 124 airstrikes, shattering the previous annual record of 63 airstrikes in Somalia, which President Trump set in 2019 during his first term.
