The United States has conducted more than 100 airstrikes in Somalia since 2017. Data collected by The New York Times shows that 326 people were killed in 47 attacks by the US last year alone. US Africa Command (AFRICOM) maintains that all victims were members of al-Shabaab, a group of jihadist militants that controls large parts of rural Somalia and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012. But a trip to the ground shows that this may not be the case.
Noor Fanah Abukar told New Internationalist that he lost five children in bombings on his village in Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region on a mid-September afternoon in 2018; his only surviving child is traumatized and having nightmares. One strike, he said, hit the river bank where his family stood waiting for him. The next hit a tree. The final strike ‘destroyed everything’.
