US Africa Command announced on Friday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia, as the Trump administration continues a record-breaking bombing campaign in the country, which receives virtually no media coverage in the US.
AFRICOM said that the strike was conducted on November 5 and targeted al-Shabaab near Jamaame in the lower Juba region about 25 miles northeast of the port city of Kismayo. As usual, the command offered no other details about the attack as it stopped sharing casualty estimates last year.
Back in November 2025, US airstrikes hit Jamaame and killed 12 civilians, including eight children, according to an investigation by The Guardian. AFRICOM has claimed that its review of the incident did not meet the military’s “more likely than not” threshold for determining that US air strikes had caused the reported harm.
The latest US strike near Jamaame came after Somali media reported that US forces withdrew from the Baledogle Military Airfield, located approximately 60 miles northwest of Mogadishu. So far, AFRICOM hasn’t confirmed the withdrawal, but if it did happen, the November 5 strike suggests it won’t impact the US air campaign.
According to AFRICOM’s official numbers, the November 5 strike marked the 91st US airstrike in Somalia this year, more than the US ever launched before 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 indications that the US isn’t announcing each strike it launches, as Somalis who live around the city of Jilib, said to be an al-Shabaab stronghold, have reported “constant” airstrikes. The Guardian recently reported that the strikes are pushing civilians closer to the Juba River in flood-prone areas. Sources speaking to the outlet accused the US of “weaponizing” the potential flood, which could cause massive civilian deaths.
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 emerged as 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.
