US Africa Command said in a press release on Friday that its forces launched an airstrike in northern Somalia on September 17 as the Trump administration continues a record-shattering bombing campaign in the country, which receives virtually no US media coverage.
AFRICOM claimed that the strike targeted an al-Shabaab weapons storage facility in the Sanaag region of northern Somalia, about 50 miles southwest of Bosaso, a port city on the Gulf of Aden in Somalia’s Puntland region.
US-backed Puntland forces issued a similar statement about the US strike. “The successful operation, conducted in coordination with Puntland authorities, struck a site used by al-Shabaab to store weapons and ammunition intended to support terrorist activity and threaten the people of Puntland and Somalia,” Puntland Counterterrorism Operations said on X.
The US made a similar claim about airstrikes that it launched in Saakow in the Lower Juba region of southern Somalia on September 14, saying it targeted an al-Shabaab weapons factory, though media reports citing local sources said the strikes hit a water treatment facility that had been hit by US missiles in previous strikes. So far, the US and the US-backed Somali federal government haven’t responded to the allegations.
The US typically says it targets al-Shabaab in its strikes in southern Somalia, while its attacks in northern Somalia usually target an ISIS affiliate, though al-Shabaab is also known to have a small presence in the north.
The US strike in Sanaag near Puntland comes a few weeks after the US military signed an agreement with the local Puntland government for the US to expand its military presence in Bosaso, a sign that the US is planning to escalate its war in Somalia. The US could also be eyeing Bosaso as a potential launchpad for operations against Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, in Yemen.
According to AFRICOM’s official numbers, the September 17 strike in Sanaag marks at least the 83rd US airstrike in Somalia in 2026, more than in any year prior to 2025, when President Trump shattered the previous record for annual US strikes by launching 124. The previous record, which he set in 2019, was 63.
There are signs that the US is not reporting each strike it launches in Somalia, and according to New America, a group that tracks the air war and also counts airstrikes that are reported but not claimed by the US, the September 17 strike was the 85th US bombing in Somalia this year.
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.
