The US has launched another airstrike in Somalia, according to a press release from US Africa Command, as the Trump administration continues its record-shattering bombing campaign in the country.
AFRICOM said that the strike targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, about 46 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bossaso, a remote mountain region where the US backs local Puntland forces against ISIS fighters who are based in caves.
The command offered no other details about the attack, as it has stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on potential civilian harm, and Puntland’s military hasn’t released a statement on military operations that day. The US struck the same area on May 4, which Somali media said targeted the Miraale Well, where ISIS fighters are based.
Besides backing the strikes in Puntland, the US has also continued its bombing campaign against al-Shabaab in southern Somalia. According to Antiwar.com’s count, which is based on numbers from AFRICOM, the US has launched at least 63 airstrikes in Somalia this year, putting it on track to break the record for annual airstrikes that President Trump set last year at 124.
President Trump’s massive escalation of the US air war in Somalia came after he loosened the rules of engagement by lifting restrictions on US drone strikes and raids carried out outside of officially declared combat zones. 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.
Despite the massive escalation, the bombing campaign continues to be ignored by US media, and the administration has never been questioned on what its long-term strategy is for Somalia.
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.
