US Africa Command said in a press release on Wednesday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia as the Trump administration continues an escalated bombing campaign in the country that receives virtually no media coverage in the US.
AFRICOM said the strike was launched on April 21 and that it targeted al-Shabaab near a village about 55 miles southwest of the southern port city of Kismayo in Jubaland, Somalia’s southernmost region.
As usual, AFRICOM offered no further details about the strikes, as it has stopped sharing information on casualties and assessments of potential civilian harm. The US-backed Somali government has been claiming major operations against al-Shabaab, but has not announced any operations on April 21.
Through its propaganda channels, al-Shabaab claimed that its fighters engaged in significant battles against US-backed Somali government forces on Sunday, and the group released photos and videos purporting to show the combat and its aftermath. Al-Shabaab said the government forces were backed by “enemy warplanes,” but it’s unclear if the US launched any airstrikes that day, as AFRICOM hasn’t announced any.
Besides bombing al-Shabaab in southern Somalia, the US has also been targeting an ISIS affiliate based in caves in a remote mountain region of Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, where the US backs local forces. The Puntland Counterterrorism Operations claimed this week that it found the bodies of eight alleged ISIS fighters who were killed in operations that involved US airstrikes.
The April 21 airstrike against al-Shabaab brings the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to at least 58, a number based solely on what AFRICOM has announced. The rate of US airstrikes slowed somewhat during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, but it has picked back up amid the very fragile ceasefire.
If AFRICOM keeps up the current pace, it’s on track to break its annual record of bombings in the country, which President Trump set at 124 last year, breaking a previous record of 63, which he set in 2019. Since returning to office last year, Trump has overseen the most dramatic escalation of airstrikes in Somalia in US history.
According to New America, an organization that tracks the air war, the US launched more airstrikes in Somalia in 2025 than were conducted during the administrations of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush combined.
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.
