{"id":3275,"date":"2022-08-11T15:52:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T15:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/?p=3275"},"modified":"2022-08-13T15:55:15","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T15:55:15","slug":"us-launches-three-airstrikes-against-al-shabab-in-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/us-launches-three-airstrikes-against-al-shabab-in-somalia\/","title":{"rendered":"US launches three airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Mogadishu (Onkod Radio) \u2014\u00a0 <\/strong>Four al-Shabab militants are presumed dead after a\u00a0<span class=\"s2\">series of airstrikes<\/span>\u00a0launched by\u00a0<span class=\"s2\">U.S. forces in Somalia<\/span>, U.S. Africa Command announced Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The strikes, launched Tuesday, were in response to an attack on Somali forces near Beledweyne, according to a release.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThe Federal Government of Somalia and U.S. Africa Command take great measures to prevent civilian casualties,\u201d the release said, indicating that there were no civilians killed or injured. \u201cThese efforts contrast with the indiscriminate attacks that al-Shabab regularly conducts against the civilian population.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">AFRICOM has in the past been accused by groups like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2020\/04\/somalia-zero-accountability-as-civilian-deaths-mount-from-us-air-strikes\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Amnesty International<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2020\/06\/16\/somalia-inadequate-us-airstrike-investigations\"><span class=\"s2\">Human Rights Watch<\/span><\/a> of killing civilians in strikes, despite the command claiming otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The latest strikes were the second in the past few weeks, as U.S. troops settle back into regular rotations to Somalia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Biden administration announced in May that several hundred service members would return to the country, overturning a Trump administration decision to pull all troops out in December 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While strikes continued from abroad,\u00a0<span class=\"s2\">AFRICOM leaders openly urged the Biden administration<\/span>\u00a0to let troops operate in Somalia, where the U.S. military has a close relationship with local forces, and where al-Shabab \u2015 al-Qaida\u2019s largest and most well-funded affiliated \u2015 continues to terrorize.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cAnd I think that our job is to provide indications of warning and disrupt those threats, so they don\u2019t become a problem to Western interests or U.S. interests, globally, and in the homeland,\u201d retired Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, who transferred authority over AFRICOM to Marine Gen. Michael Langley on Monday, told Military Times in July.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cSo I think we have the resources about right to do that. Would I like to have more resources to do that? Absolutely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mogadishu (Onkod Radio) &mdash;&nbsp; Four al-Shabab militants are presumed dead after a&nbsp;series of airstrikes&nbsp;launched by&nbsp;U.S. forces in Somalia, U.S. Africa Command announced Wednesday. The strikes, launched Tuesday, were in response to an attack on Somali forces near Beledweyne, according to a release. &ldquo;The Federal Government of Somalia and U.S. Africa Command take great measures to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/US-Marines-in-Somalia.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onkodradio.staging.ileysinc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}