Trump says he ordered air strikes on the Islamic State group in Somalia

Donald Trump says he ordered military air strikes on a senior attack planner and others from the Islamic State (IE) group in Somalia.

“These killers, which we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our allies,” said Trump on social networks.

“The strikes have destroyed the caves in which they live and have killed many terrorists without, in any way, to harm civilians.”

The BBC could not immediately check the reports independently.

Trump did not name any of the targeted people in strikes.

The president ended his article with: “The message to the Islamic State and all the others who attack the Americans is that” we will find you, and we will kill you! “”

In a statement, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that “our initial assessment is that several agents were killed in the air strikes and that no civilian was injured”.

Hegseth said strikes “further degrade” the ability to “trace and carry out terrorist attacks” and “sends a clear signal that the United States is always ready to find and eliminate terrorists”.

Trump also made a hit on the former administration, declaring that the American army had targeted this planner in particular for years, but accused Joe Biden “and his friends” of not acting quickly enough “to do the work. did it! “

The American forces killed are the leader, Bilal al-Sudani, and 10 of his agents in a mountainous cave remote in the north of Somalia in 2023, in an operation commissioned by Biden.

Is achieved international importance in the 2010s, in particular in Syria and Iraq, but now its presence is mainly limited to certain parts of Africa.

The Somali branch of IS was formed in 2015 by a group of defectors from the Affiliate Al-Shabab group affiliated to Al-Qaeda-the largest jihadist group in Somalia.

Is in Somalia is known to extort the inhabitants and mainly performs sporadic attacks on a small scale, According to the US office of the Director of National Intelligence.