In an airstrike carried out on Sunday in a remote area of the southern Somali province of Jubaland, the U.S military claimed to have killed two members of the Al Shabab insurgent group.
In an effort to defeat Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda offshoot that wants to impose its vision of Islamic law and remove the nation’s Western-supported central government, the United States has been conducting airstrikes in Somalia.
According to a statement released by US Africa Command (AFRICOM) late on Monday, the strike took place close to Libikus in the Lower Juba area.
“The command’s initial assessment is that two Al-Shabab terrorists were killed in action,” AFRICOM said. “No civilians were injured or killed given the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.”
Rights advocates claim that the US conceals its actions in Somalia in secrecy, which may compromise responsibility for incidents involving civilian casualties.
Formed in the mid-2000s, Al Shabab came to prominence in the 2006–2009 Somalia War. In early August 2011, the Transitional Federal Government under Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and its AMISOM allies managed to capture all of Mogadishu from the al-Shabaab militants.
In August 2014, the Somali-government-led Operation Indian Ocean was launched to clean up the remaining insurgent-held pockets in the countryside.
On September 1, 2014, a U.S. drone strike carried out as part of the operation killed al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubair.
U.S. authorities hailed the raid as a major symbolic and operational loss for al-Shabaab, and the Somali government offered a 45-day amnesty to all moderate members of the militant group