US fighter jets launched from the USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea on Feb. 2 struck a hidden base of the local ISIS franchise in the interior mountains of Somalia’s northern autonomous enclave of Puntland. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the “initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed” in these first US air-strikes under the new Trump presidency. The strikes were carried out with the cooperation of the governments of both Puntland and Somalia, whose President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud expressed his “deepest gratitude.” The Puntland Dervish Forces have for some five years been fighting the self-declared “Islamic State Somalia” in the enclave’s Cal Miskaad mountains. (AFP, Garowe Online, Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, LWG)
Photo via Garowe Online
Al-Shabab attacks hotel during a security meeting
Tribal elders from territory that al-Shabab controls were meeting with Somali government officials in a hotel to discuss cooperation in the war against the insurgent group when a Land Cruiser exploded out front, followed by gunmen attacking. When the siege was over, several people on both sides had been killed, although an official death toll as not been released. (PRI)
Death toll in Somalia hotel siege
Al-Shabab gunmen stormed a hotel in central Somalia as government officials and clan elders met to discuss action against the group March 11. At least 16 people were killed during the attack on the Cairo Hotel in Beledweyne, and the subsequent rescue attempt after a day-long siege. The death toll included the insurgentsâfour of whom blew themselves up. (TNH)
UAE carries out air-strikes in Somalia’s Puntland enclave
UAE has been conducting air-strikes in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region in support of ground operations against the so-called Islamic State. The Puntland security forces said the large-scale counterinsurgency campaign, targeting hideouts in the al-Miskaad mountains, has so far killed 44 ISIS fighters. The UAE has growing geopolitical ambitions in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. (TNH)
Al-Shabab advance on Mogadishu
The insurgent group al-Shabab is increasingly looking like a government-in-waiting as it pushes closer to the capital, Mogadishu. It has seized key locations in Middle and Lower Shabelle on either side of the city and came close to assassinating President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in a bomb attack in Mogadishu. With the military in disarray, the government has been enlisting police and prison guards for its war effort. At the same time, long-standing security support from the African Union and the US is now less certain. (TNH)