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, which is ignored by US media.
AFRICOM said that the strike was launched on July 30 and targeted al-Shabaab near the village of Jamaame in Somalia’s Lower Juba, the country’s southernmost region. Jamaame was the site of US airstrikes in November 2025 that killed 12 civilians, including eight children, according to an investigation from The Guardian.
AFRICOM offered no further details about the July 30 strike, since it stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments of potential civilian harm last year.
“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said. The US-backed Somali Defense Ministry also did not release any statements about military operations that day.
The July 30 strike marks at least the 77th US bombing in Somalia this year, according to AFRICOM’s numbers. On top of the airstrikes against al-Shabaab, the US has also been bombing an ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region.
President Trump has overseen a massive escalation of the US air war in Somalia since his return to office, which 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. AFRICOM launched at least 124 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025, and according to New America, an organization that tracks the air war, that number is more than all of the Somalia airstrikes 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.
