The U.S. military conducted airstrikes against the senior ISIS attack planner and other terrorists in Somalia on Saturday.
President Trump said on his Truth Social network that the strikes, the first military action since he took office Jan. 20, were carried out Saturday morning.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement the U.S. worked with Somalian authorities to carry out the offensive.
“This morning, I ordered precision military air strikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia,” Trump wrote in his post.
The airstrikes took out ISIS operatives in the Golis mountains in the Bari region, Hegseth said, including a senior official, responsible for planning ISIS attacks.
The name and fate of the alleged ISIS official was not included.
“These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies,” Trump added in his Truth Social post. “The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”
Hegseth said “multiple operatives were killed” in the airstrikes, further degrading “ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians.”
Hegseth said the strikes send “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.”
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!,’” Trump wrote.
The Somali president’s office said President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was informed of the airstrike. Mohamud “acknowledges the unwavering support of the United States in the fight against international terrorism,” his office said on X.
“This latest operation reinforces the strong security partnership between Somalia and the United States in combating extremist threats,” the post said.
An official in the Somali president’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the government welcomed the move.
“Somalia cannot be a safe haven for terrorists,” the official said, adding that the strike’s impact was still being assessed.
In his post, Trump took a swipe at the Biden administration for failing to clean ISIS out of the country. “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,” he said. “I did!”
ISIS-Somalia took shape in 2015 after a group of defectors from al Qaeda-affiliated terror group al-Shabaab organized and pledged their allegiance to ISIS.
Their attacks have been sporadic, consisting largely of close-quarter assassinations and IED operations.
The group is believed to be between 100 and 400 members strong, according to the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
