The government of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region confirmed that U.S. military strikes in the Golis Mountains killed several “key figures” of the ISIL (ISIS) group. On Feb. 1, Donald Trump took credit for the strikes, asserting that there were no civilian casualties, among other bold claims.
According to Al-Jazeera, Trump took to social media to proclaim that those strikes “destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”
He continued,
taking a shot at former President Joe Biden, “Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did! The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’”According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the strikes “further degrades ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening US citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians.”
According to The Washington Post, U.S. Africa Command initially corroborated Trump’s claims that no civilians were killed in the attacks, but that report should be taken with a grain of salt.
In the past, they have made such claims, only to have to take responsibility for civilian deaths after mounting pressure from human rights groups and local citizens.
Although Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, praised Trump in a
press release, Somali-American journalist Mohamed Gabobe reported in October 2024 that Mohamud’s strategy to combat al-Shabab—another group with far more influence in Somalia than ISIL—was starting to further fracture an already divided country.According to Elizabeth Shackleford, a former diplomat who now works at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, if American forces are going to be persistently deployed in Somalia, the parameters need to be clearly defined. “We shouldn’t be actively involved in the war in Somalia without some form of authorization saying why we’re there, who our enemy is, and what we’re allowed to do. That should be basic, but nobody cares,” Shackleford said.
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