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 coverage in US media.
AFRICOM said the strike was launched on September 8 and targeted al-Shabaab in the vicinity of Quumbi, a village about 50 miles northeast of the southern port city of Kismayo,
As usual, AFRICOM offered no other details about the strike, and there were no statements from US-backed forces about military operations in the area that day. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.
According to AFRICOM’s numbers, the attack brings the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to 81, higher than any other year prior to 2025, when President Trump oversaw 124 AFRICOM airstrikes, breaking the previous annual record of 63 that he set in 2019.
The US has also been conducting an air war against an ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, and Drop Site News recently reported that a US strike was carried out in the region on September 3, though it has not been claimed by AFRICOM, suggesting that not every US attack is being announced.
According to numbers from New America, an organization that tracks the air war and also counts airstrikes that are reported but not claimed by the US, the September 8 strike would bring the total number of US bombings in Somalia this year to 83.
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.
