The strike was taken at the request of the Federal Government of Somalia. The initial assessment is that five militants were killed, and no civilians were injured. The US regularly engages al-Shabaab forces in coordination with Somalia’s government. In May 2022, President Joe Biden approved a Pentagon request to deploy fewer than 500 US troops to Somalia in an effort to combat the terror organization. the US Africa Command says the airstrike was in support of Somali National Army forces who were engaged by the terrorist organization,” the release says. The airstrike comes a little more than a week after the US killed 10 militants in a strike in an area near Afmadow. “We have seen, regrettably, clear evidence that al- Shabaab has the intent and capability to target Americans,” a senior administration official said at the time of Biden’s approval of the Pentagon request for troops to go to Somalia. The US has carried out several airstrikes against al- shabaab since the beginning of the year, the AFRICOM release says, including a strike last week that killed four militants in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The U.S. says al-shabaab is “the largest and most kinetically active al-Qaeda network in the world” and has proved “both its will and capability” to attack partner and U.s. forces and threaten U.K. security interests, the release adds. The strike was in “a remote area near Hareeri Kalle, approximately 15 kilometers south of Galcad, Somalia,” the US statement says, adding that it was a “collective self-defense airstrike” and that killed five militants, but no civilians was injured or killed. The Pentagon has not commented on the airstrike. The United States withdrew all of its troops from Somalia under former President Donald Trump in May 2017, making it the only country in the region to lose American troops in the war on terror, the White House said in a statement last month. The White House has not said how many troops it plans to send to Somalia by 2022. The UN has said that the U.N. Security Council has approved a plan to send 500 troops to the country to help combat al- Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, which is based in the country’s capital city of Mombasa, Somalia, to fight the terror group, al-Gababaab, or al-Qa’ida, in the Somali capital, Garowe. The mission is expected to begin in the coming months, the UN says. It’s not clear how many American troops will be involved in the mission, but the Pentagon has said it will be part of a larger effort to fight al-Qaida in the Middle East, including in Kenya, Nigeria and the region’s Horn of African region, including Djibouti, Somalia and the Central African Republic. It is not known if the US will send any troops at all in the next few years, the US says.
U.S. airstrike kills 5 al-Shabaab militants in Somalia, officials say. U.S airstrike kills five al- shabaab fighters in Somalia. US airstrikes kill 5 al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia in recent
