WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — President Donald Trump on Saturday said he ordered military airstrikes on a senior Islamic State attack planner and others from the organization in Somalia.
“These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said no civilians were injured.
Los Angeles’ Palisades, Eaton fires 100% contained: Cal Fire
“Our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed. 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,” a statement read in part.
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 IS 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.
Trump fires the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
A U.S. military airstrike in Somalia last May targeted IS militants and killed three, according to U.S. Africa Command.
The number of IS militants in the country are 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.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
