US Strikes Target ISIS Attack Planner in Somalia

An aircraft takes off to join the U.S.-led coalition to conduct air strikes against military targets in Yemen, aimed at the Iran-backed Houthi militia that has been targeting international shipping in the Red Sea, from an undisclosed location, in this screengrab from a handout video released on Jan. 12, 2024. U.S. Central Command via X/Handout via Reuters

U.S. military forces are conducting strikes in Somalia targeting elements of the local affiliate of the Islamist terror organization ISIS.

An initial assessment of the Feb. 1 strikes suggested that multiple ISIS-Somalia operatives were killed and that there were no civilian casualties, according to a statement by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that was shared with The Epoch Times.

“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,” Hegseth said.

The operation was conducted in coordination with the Somali government, he added, and was carried out by elements of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees American military operations in the region.

The strikes took place in the Golis Mountains in a region of northwestern Somalia that is claimed by various insurgent groups and a government body of the unrecognized breakaway state of Somaliland.

ISIS quickly expanded in both size and influence throughout much of northern and central Africa even as it lost most of its territory in the Middle East from late 2015 through 2017.

Since then, the terror group has shifted to an insurgency-based terror campaign, setting up highly autonomous local cells in numerous African countries, often recruiting disaffected young men and members of smaller local Islamist organizations.

The ISIS affiliate in Somalia, for example, emerged in 2015 as a breakaway faction from al-Shabaab, itself a close African ally of Al-Qaeda.

U.S. forces have maintained a presence in Somalia since 2007, providing operational and training support to government forces there against various terror groups.

President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from the country near the end of his first term in office, but that move was reversed by the Biden administration.

Numerous Islamist insurgencies have developed in the region over the last decade and a half, and U.S. forces have sporadically been brought in to deliver airstrikes against ISIS targets in the Golis since at least 2019.

U.S. forces also conducted air strikes in Somalia as recently as December in an effort to deteriorate the capabilities of the al-Shabaab terror network, which also maintains a foothold in the country.

Trump characterized the operation as consisting of a set of precision strikes in a Saturday post on his Truth Social account, adding that a senior attack planner for ISIS and several recruits had been killed in the strikes.

“These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies,” the post read. “The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”