US Africa Command said in a press release on Monday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia on April 9, marking at least the 53rd US bombing in the country this year.
AFRICOM said the strike targeted al-Shabaab about 80 miles northwest of the southern port city of Kismayo in Lower Juba, Somalia’s southernmost region. The command offered no further details about the attack, as it has stopped sharing information on casualties or assessments of civilian harm since early 2025.
“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.
The US-backed Somali Defense Ministry said in a statement that it conducted an “air operation” with the support of “international partners” on that same day, but the attack took place in the Mudug region in north-central Somalia, much further to the north than the US bombing.
The Somali Defense Ministry claimed that 70 al-Shabaab militants were killed and eight vehicles were destroyed in its operation. It’s possible the US was involved and hasn’t announced it, or the Somali military could have received air support from Turkey, which has deployed Bayraktar TB2 drones and F-16s to Somalia.
On top of its bombing campaign against al-Shabaab, the US has also been launching airstrikes against an ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region. President Trump has overseen a dramatic escalation of the US air war, launching 124 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025, nearly double the previous annual record, which he set at 63 during his first term in 2019.
Despite the massive escalation, the US war in Somalia receives virtually no media coverage in the US. 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.
