The US launched another airstrike in Somalia on April 13, US Africa Command said in a press release on Wednesday, as the bombing campaign continues with virtually no US media coverage.
AFRICOM said the strike targeted al-Shabaab in the village of Mido, approximately 55 miles northwest of the southern port city of Kismayo in Somalia’s Lower Juba region. As usual, the command offered no other details about the attack, but the US-backed Somali government has announced military operations in the area.
The Somali Defense Ministry said on April 14 that its forces, along with local Jubaland troops, have been conducting operations against al-Shabaab in the Lower Juba and Middle Juba regions in recent days. “During the course of these ground operations, airstrikes supported by international partners were carried out in parallel, effectively intensifying the targeting of Al-Shabaab militants hiding in those areas,” the ministry said.
The ministry claimed that the operations “neutralized” 27 al-Shabaab militants and that weapons and other equipment were seized. The ministry also announced airstrikes conducted with “international partners” further north in the Lower Shabbelle region of southern Somalia, which it claimed killed 54 militants.
The April 13 US airstrike brings the total number of US bombings in the country this year to at least 54. The rate of US airstrikes slowed somewhat during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, but it appears to have picked back up amid the very fragile ceasefire.
Besides the US airstrikes against al-Shabaab in southern Somalia, the US has also been bombing a small ISIS affiliate based in northeastern Somalia’s 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.
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.
