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WASHINGTON – The Pentagon's African command announced on Tuesday that it has carried out the deadliest attack on the Islamist extremist group Shabab for nearly a year, killing some 60 fighters in central Somalia.
The strike took place Friday in nearby Harardhere, about 300 km northeast of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, the army said in a statement. The commanders of Africa Command gave no further details except to indicate that he had neither killed nor wounded any civilians, suggesting that the militants were in a camp or in a camp. gathered for an attack.
The strike took place after a series of recent attacks by the Shabab against Somali security forces and their US advisors across the country.
On 21 September, Shabab fighters attacked US and Somali troops some 30 kilometers northwest of Kismayo. Ten days earlier, militants hit Somalia and US forces in Mubarak, central Somalia, killing a Somali soldier.
"These sustained attacks demonstrate that Shabab retains the ability to launch conventional offensives, in addition to its terrorist attack capability," said Bill Roggio, editor-in-chief of FDD's Long War Journal, website of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which traces the military strikes against militant groups.
In its statement, the African command declared that last week's strike was the deadliest against the Shabab since an air strike against a Shabab camp northwest of Mogadishu on November 21 had killed a hundreds of activists.
So far this year in Somalia, the United States has conducted 27 strikes, including using drones, mostly against a small number of Shabab fighters. It's about to overtake last year's attacks on the group.
In 2017, the army conducted 35 airstrikes in Somalia – 31 against Shabab fighters and 4 against Islamic State militants, according to Roggio.
Attacks by Shabab, the al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, highlight the resilience of al-Qaida and Islamic State regional weapons in countries such as Yemen, Libya, West Africa and Afghanistan.
"Shabab is conducting a relentless campaign of bombings and killings targeting local government forces," Russell Travers, Acting Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week.
Last weekend marked the first anniversary of the deadliest attack on Shabab, a truck bomb in Mogadishu that killed more than 500 people.
There are now about 500 American soldiers in Somalia; most of them are special operations forces, including green army berets, navy pirates and naval SEALs stationed in a small constellation of bases across the East African country.
They have been training and fought alongside local troops in Somalia for more than ten years and are now supported by the enhanced air strike authorities under the Trump administration.
Over the past year, the Pentagon has raised new concerns about the Shabab, who were also responsible for another of the deadliest terrorist attacks on the African continent, when it hit a popular shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people. .
US military officials worried about the group's growth, even after losing much of its Somali territory in recent years and being targeted by US drone strikes.
In June, a US Special Forces soldier, the Staff Sergeant. Alexander W. Conrad, 26, of Chandler, Ariz., Was killed and four others wounded during an attack in southwestern Somalia against Shabab fighters, three officials in the USSR department said. defense.
At the time, Sergeant Conrad's death was the second American defeat in Somalia in about a year. In May 2017, a member of the Navy SEALs, Chief Military Officer Kyle Milliken was killed and two other US soldiers injured during a raid.
The victims are the first to be made public in Africa since an ambush in Niger in October 2017 that killed four US soldiers.
