The U.S. military, in coordination with the Somali government, conducted an airstrike that killed an al Shabab leader on Saturday.
The Somali Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism identified the target of the strike as Abdullahi Nadir, while U.S. Africa Command confirmed the strike but not the identity of the target.
No civilians were injured or killed in the strike that took place near Jilib, roughly 230 miles southwest of Mogadishu, AFRICOM said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
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“Al-Shabaab is the largest and most kinetically active al-Qaeda network in the world and has proved both its will and capability to attack U.S. forces and threaten U.S. security interests. U.S. Africa Command, alongside its partners, continues to take action to prevent this malicious terrorist group from planning and conducting attacks on civilians,” the statement said. “U.S. Africa Command’s forces will continue training, advising, and equipping partner forces to give them the tools that they need to degrade al-Shabaab.”
The weekend strike is at least the fifth since the beginning of August.
Less than two weeks ago, AFRICOM and Somali forces, without harming any civilians, killed more than two dozen al Shabab terrorists who were attacking Somali forces.
“The command’s initial assessment is that the strike killed 27 al-Shabaab terrorists and that no civilians were injured. U.S. forces are authorized to conduct strikes in defense of designated partner forces,” the statement said. “The defensive strikes allowed the Somali National Army and African Union Transition Mission in Somalia forces to regain the initiative and continue the operation to disrupt al-Shabaab in the Hiraan region of central Somalia.“
USAFRICOM conducted three strikes in mid-August, killing four terrorists, it said at the time.
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President Joe Biden agreed to deploy roughly 500 troops to Somalia in May, roughly 18 months after the Trump administration withdrew them just days before Biden took office.
Months earlier, Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the former commander of AFRICOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-March that al Shabab “has only grown stronger and bolder over the past year,” while “deadly terrorism has metastasized to Africa.”
