US airstrikes surge in Somalia, surpassing 2024 numbers
The U.S. military has carried out more than two dozen airstrikes on targets in Somalia in the first five months of this year, double the total number of strikes in 2024.
The escalation of the air war comes as the United States is 'actively pursuing and eliminating jihadists' in the country, at the request of Somalia's government, Gen. Michael Langley, head of U.S. Africa Command, said in a May 30 briefing. The air campaign has targeted ISIS militants and fighters with the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group, which continues to fight for territory against the federal Somali government.
While Langley claimed 25 separate strikes, American forces carried out 33 airstrikes on Somalia this year, Kelly Cahalan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Africa Command, told Task & Purpose this week. New America, which tracks airstrikes in Somalia and other countries the United States is militarily engaged in, reports 34 total airstrikes in 2025. Between 109-174 people have been killed so far, per New America.
Langley noted that the purpose of the air campaign is to back Somali military operations on the ground against ISIS members and al-Shabab fighters. He said that the rising number of strikes 'have achieved tactical gains against both groups.' Langley emphasized a 'moral imperative' in protecting civilians in strikes. It's unclear how many civilians have been killed by American airstrikes this year. Over the last two decades, at least 33 civilians died as a result of those bombings.
In February, the USS Harry S. Truman — operating in the waters around Yemen and the Horn of Africa to fight Houthis in Yemen — carried out a major airstrike on Somalia. More than a dozen aircraft from the Truman Carrier Strike Group dropped 124,000 pounds of munitions on ISIS fighters on Feb. 1, killing 14. The acting chief of naval operations initially called it the 'largest air strike in the history of the world' earlier this month, although the Navy walked that back, qualifying it in terms of the amount of firepower sent by a single aircraft carrier.
Since the start of the Global War on Terror, the United States has regularly bombed Somalia. The first post-9/11 strike occurred in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration, which carried out a dozen total. Barack Obama's presidency saw that quadruple. But the largest expansion happened during Donald Trump's first term, with 219 airstrikes reported, per Airwars. The Biden administration drastically scaled back its air campaign in the country, carrying out 51 over four years, even as the U.S. redeployed several hundred troops to the country. In the first four months of the second Trump administration the U.S. has already carried out approximately half as many strikes.
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