01 February 2025 , 20:23
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The U.S. military conducted coordinated airstrikes against ISIS operatives in Somalia, the first attacks in the African nation during President Trump’s second term.
Mr. Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social that he ordered "precision Military air strikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia."
"These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies," the post continued. "The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians."
On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strikes by U.S. Africa Command were directed by Mr. Trump and coordinated with Somalia’s government.
"Our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed," Hegseth said in a statement.
"This action further degrades ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians and 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," the statement read.
Trump did not identify the ISIS planner or say whether that person was killed in the strike.
The Pentagon’s counterterrorism strategy in Africa has been strained as two key partners, Chad and Niger, ousted U.S. forces last year and took over key bases that the U.S. military had used to train and conduct missions against terrorist groups across the Sahel, the vast arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert.
U.S. military officials have warned that ISIS cells have received increasing direction from the group’s leadership that relocated to northern Somalia. That has included how to kidnap Westerners for ransom, how to learn better military tactics, how to hide from drones and how to build their own small quadcopters.
A U.S. military airstrike in Somalia last May targeted ISIS militants and killed three, according to U.S. Africa Command.
The number of ISIS militants in the country is estimated to be in the hundreds, mostly scattered in the Cal Miskaat mountains in Puntland’s Bari region, according to the International Crisis Group.
Saturday’s operation followed military airstrikes on Jan. 30 in northwest Syria, killing a senior operative in Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda affiliate, U.S. Central Command said.