On Saturday, the U.S. military carried out airstrikes against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Somalia, as announced by President Donald Trump.
“This morning I ordered precision military airstrikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that the airstrikes focused on IS-Somalia militants in the Golis mountains, located in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of the country.
“Our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed,” Hegseth stated.
Local commanders verified the strikes to AFP.
“We don’t know so far the number of the casualties, but we believe the missiles precisely hit the targets,” said Mohamed Ali, a military commander in the Bossaso region, in a phone interview with AFP.
“We believe there are casualties among the terrorist leaders, including foreigners who the Puntland forces had been pursuing in recent days,” Ali added.
Another army member from a neighboring area, Abdirahman Adan, described hearing “five loud explosions” followed by smoke over the impacted site.
Puntland has yet to release an official statement on the airstrikes.
Hegseth remarked that the strikes further diminish ISIS’s capacity to “plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians. It sends a clear message that the United States is always prepared to track down and eliminate terrorists who pose a threat to the U.S. and our allies.”
Although ISIS maintains a relatively smaller presence in Somalia compared to the Al-Qaeda-aligned Al-Shabaab, experts have raised concerns about the group’s increasing activity.
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘We will find you, and we will kill you!’” Trump added in his post.
(AFP)
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