The US military has conducted airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) operatives in Somalia, the first attacks in the African country during Donald Trump’s second term as president.
Trump said on Saturday that he ordered strikes on a senior IS attack planner and others from the organisation.
The president wrote in a post on Truth Social: “These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies.
“The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.
“Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did!
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’”
Trump did not identify the IS figure or state whether they were killed in the attack.
The strikes were carried out in the Golis Mountains, according to the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who added that an initial assessment indicated multiple operatives were killed. He said no civilians were harmed.
Hegseth said the strikes degrade IS’s ability “to plot and conduct terrorist attacks” threatening the US, its partners and innocent civilians.
“[It] sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border-protection and many other operations under President Trump’s leadership,” he said in a statement.
The Somalian president’s office said that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was informed about the US military action targeting senior IS leadership in northern parts of the country.
“He acknowledges the unwavering support of the United States in the fight against international terrorism and welcomes the continued commitment under the decisive leadership of president Donald Trump,” the office said in a post on X.
The US has periodically carried out airstrikes in Somalia for years under Republican and Democratic administrations.
A strike, which also targeted IS militants, was carried out in coordination with Somalia last year and killed three members of the group, the US military said.
However, the Pentagon’s counterterrorism strategy in Africa has been strained, as two key partners, Chad and Niger, took over key bases that the US military had used to train and conduct missions against terrorist groups across the Sahel, the vast arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert.
