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US News

US kills 17 Somalia terrorists months after Biden reverses Trump pullout

By
Kathleen Bieberly
Published Aug. 17, 2022
Updated Aug. 17, 2022, 1:28 p.m. ET

The American military has killed 17 al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia over the past week — three months after President Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from the east African nation.

Thirteen al-Shabaab fighters were killed in a Sunday airstrike while “actively attacking Somali National Army forces in a remote location” near Teedaan in central Somalia, US Africa Command said in a statement Wednesday.

That strike came four days after US forces launched three airstrikes that killed four al-Shabaab members who had attacked Somali forces on Aug. 9.

The past week’s airstrikes were the fourth and fifth conducted against al-Shabaab in Somalia so far this year. In 2020, the last year before Trump’s pullout, the US launched 63 strikes against the militant group.

Somali terrorists train in the country
American forces were authorized to carry out the airstrikes “in defense of designated partner forces.” No civilians were killed. AP

“Violent extremist organizations like al-Shabaab present long-term threats to Somali, regional and U.S. interests,” AFRICOM said.

No civilians were harmed in the airstrikes, which American forces are authorized to conduct “in defense of designated partner forces,” according to the statement.

In May, Biden ordered the return of US special operations troops to Somalia after Trump pulled roughly 700 American forces from the country in the final days of his presidency.

After Trump’s order, those troops moved to other countries on the continent and began rotating into Somalia for training missions. In March of this year, Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, who led AFRICOM at the time, criticized the plan as “commuting to work” during testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I believe my assessment is that it [the strategy] is not effective. … We are marching in place at best. We may be backsliding,” Townsend said.

Biden’s reversal came after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin requested a return to Somalia out of “concern for the safety of our troops who have incurred additional risk by deploying in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis,” then-Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in May.

President Biden.
The deadly strike came three months after President Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from the country. AFP via Getty Images

“The advise-and-assist mission, as we’ve seen in many places around the world, is best done when you’re on site and you can develop those relationships and keep those conversations going,” the then-Pentagon spokesman said. “When you’re coming and going, that contact is a little bit harder to work.”

Al-Shabaab is the militant wing of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts, which controlled southern Somalia in late 2006, according to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. While the council was defeated in 2007, al-Shabaab has continued its violent insurgency since then.