US says new air strike on Daesh target in Somalia kills three

WASHINGTON — US forces in Africa have launched an airstrike against the Daesh group in Somalia, just weeks after another strike killed the terrorist group’s second in command there, a military statement said on Saturday. 

Three Daesh militants were killed in the strike on Friday in the Golis Mountains in northern Somalia, the US Africa Command, or Africom, said in the statement. No civilians were killed or wounded, it said.

“This air strike eliminated ISIS-Somalia [Daesh] members staged in a remote location in northern Somalia,” said Maj. Gen. Gregg Olson, Africom’s director of operations, using the abbreviation for Daesh in Somalia.

“Removing these extremists impacts ISIS-Somalia’s [Daesh] ability to terrorise innocent Somalis in the region and it creates confusion within the terrorist network.”

Daesh has a relatively small presence in Somalia compared to the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab.

But Daesh has been particularly active in the northern Puntland region, where its fighters have established training camps and depots for weapons coming mainly from nearby Yemen.

Al Shabaab, by far the largest radical Islamist group in Somalia, officially integrated into Al Qaeda in 2012. But a small number of its members — around 200 — defected to the Daesh.

That group, based in semi-autonomous Puntland, is led by Abdulqadir Mumin, who in August 2016 was placed by the US State Department on a list of international terrorists.

Daesh in Somalia has been the target of previous air strikes.

Africa Command says its April 14 strike in Somalia killed Daesh’s second in command there, Abdulhakim Dhuqub, who was in charge of the group’s attack planning and daily operations.

As of late 2018, Africom put the number of Daesh fighters in Somalia at between 75 and 250 — a small number compared to the estimated 3,000 to 7,000 Al Shabaab members.