The American army led air strikes against Islamic State agents (SE) in Somalia, the first attacks of the African country during Donald Trump’s second term as president.
The strikes were carried out against the IS-Somalia in the mountains of Golisas, in the semi-autonomous region of northern Somalia. In 2015, IS-Somalia broke out from Al-Shabaab, a much larger and more known jihadist organization affiliated with Al-Qaida, which controls certain parts of southern Somalia.
Trump said on Saturday that he had ordered strikes on a senior is an attack planner and others from the organization.
The president wrote in an article on Truth Social: “These killers, which we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our allies.
“The strikes destroyed the caves in which they live and have killed many terrorists without, in any way, to harm civilians.
“Our soldiers have targeted this Islamic State attack planner for years, but Biden and his friends would not act quickly enough to do the work. I did it!
“The message to Isis and all the others who attack the Americans is that” we will find you, and we will kill you! ” »»
Trump did not identify the figure or indication of IS if they were killed in the attack. The American Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, added that an initial assessment indicated that several agents had been killed. He said that no civilian had been injured.
Hegseth said that the degradation of strikes is the ability to “trace and carry out terrorist attacks” threatening the United States, its partners and its innocent civilians.
“(IT) sends a clear signal that the United States is always ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even if we carry out a robust border protection and many other operations under direction President Trump, “he said.
Estimates of the total number of active members in IS-Somalia have varied considerably, but officials of the American and Somali government think that it has about 300 to 700 members, around half of which are foreign fighters who have entered Somalia.
The Puntland regional government was involved in its own one month operation against IS-Somalia following a deadly attack which it led against the Puntland security forces in December.
A Puntland official said that his forces “had been involved in a low -intensity conflict with the group for almost a decade and have released more than 200 km of territory from their presence since the start of this operation.”
In an article on social networks, Puntland thanked the United States and the United Arab Emirates for their support.
The Somali President’s office said Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had been informed of US military action targeting leadership in the north of the country’s regions.
“He recognizes the unwavering support of the United States in the fight against international terrorism and welcomes continuous commitment under the decisive direction of President Donald Trump,” said the office in an article on X.
The strikes took place one day after the Somali president called on Trump in an interview with the Washington Post “not to withdraw the American advisers and the consultants who support the training of our special forces”.
Trump opposed the deployment of American troops in distant conflicts and withdrew soldiers from the country in 2020, mainly based on air strikes to degrade jihadist organizations operating in Somalia. He ordered more air strikes in the country than any other American president.
A strike, which also targeted is activists, was conducted in coordination with Somalia last year and killed three members of the group, said the US military.
After the American strikes, the US officials informed the media saying that they targeted Abdulqadir MUMIN, who, according to them, has become quietly, the world leader of IS, but the experts expressed a doubt that he occupied a such a main role.