Trump orders airstrikes against Islamic State in Somalia
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes Saturday against the Islamic State group in northern Somalia, the first major U.S. military operation overseas since he took office.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that the military’s initial assessment was that “multiple operatives” in the remote Golis Mountains in the country’s north were killed in the strikes, and that no civilians were harmed.
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The strikes were conducted by Navy and Air Force warplanes, including F/A-18 fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman operating in the Red Sea, three Defense Department officials said.
“This action further degrades ISIS’ ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners and innocent civilians,” Hegseth said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group.
The strikes were more symbolic than substantive, several U.S. military and defense officials said, meant more to burnish Trump’s image as a commander in chief protecting the country from terrorists in the early days of his administration than to neutralize a serious threat.
Trump said in a message on social media that the strikes had killed a “Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited” who were “hiding in caves.”
Somalia is better known as a harbor for al-Shabab, the terrorist group linked to al-Qaida, than for the Islamic State. U.S. intelligence officials estimate that al-Shabab in Somalia has 7,000 to 12,000 members and an annual income — including from taxing or extorting civilians — of about $120 million, making it the largest and wealthiest Qaida affiliate in the world.
However, after an Army veteran’s Islamic State-inspired attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day and amid fears of a resurgent Islamic State in Syria after the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government, counterterrorism specialists have warned the new administration that it needs to take such threats seriously.
“For Trump, this is important to show a muscular response, especially if he plans to draw down U.S. troop levels from conflict zones,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm.
The strikes also aimed to counter critics who say that rushing active-duty troops to the Southwestern border to stem the flow of migrants could jeopardize other military missions.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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