US Africa Command announced on Thursday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia as the Trump administration continues a record-shattering bombing campaign in the country.
AFRICOM said the strike was launched on July 13 and that it targeted al-Shabaab in the vicinity of Qumbi, a village about 55 miles northwest of the port city of Kismayo in Somalia’s Lower Juba region. The command offered no other details about the attack as it stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on potential civilian harm last year.
The attack marked the second strike AFRICOM announced that it said was launched on July 13. The other strike was conducted about 120 miles southwest of Mogadishu and also allegedly targeted al-Shabaab.
The strike announced on Thursday marks at least the 75th US airstrike in Somalia this year, as the Trump administration is on pace to break the record for annual US airstrikes in the country, which it set at 124 in 2025 as President Trump oversaw a massive escalation in the air war after he loosened the rules of engagement.
The US has also been targeting an ISIS affiliate in northeast Somalia’s Puntland region, though according to AFRICOM, it hasn’t conducted attacks in the area since early May. Despite the major escalation in US airstrikes in Somalia, the war is ignored by US media and receives virtually no coverage.
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.
