US dramatically escalates air strikes on Somalia under Trump this year 

The United States has dramatically intensified its military air campaign in Somalia, carrying out 111 strikes against armed groups, also killing civilians, since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to the New America Foundation, which monitors the operations.

In the most recent one, the US Africa Command conducted an air strike on December 14, approximately 50 kilometres (31 miles) northeast of the city of Kismayo, targeting what it said were members of the Somali armed group, al-Shabaab.

The escalation began in February when Trump launched his administration’s first strike in Somalia. Months later, a senior US Navy admiral said the US had carried out what he said was the “largest air strike in the history of the world” from an aircraft carrier, marking a sharp departure from the previous administration’s approach.

The strike total this year already surpasses the combined number carried out under Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and it puts Trump on track to potentially exceed even his own first-term record of 219 strikes.

The intensified campaign targets both al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate that has fought Somalia’s government since 2007 and controls large areas of the south-central regions, and ISIL (SIS) in Somalia, a smaller offshoot concentrated in the northeast with an estimated 1,500 fighters.

Somalia’s war with armed groups was Africa’s third-deadliest over the last year, killing 7,289 people, according to the US-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

The United States has been allied with Somalia’s federal government, training elite forces and conducting air strikes in support of local operations. US troops have also been based in the country.

The surge in strikes follows a directive by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that reversed Biden-era restrictions requiring White House approval for strikes outside warzones, giving AFRICOM commanders greater authority to launch attacks.

David Sterman, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation, told Al Jazeera there appeared to be “a demand signal from the White House for escalation” and “a willingness to allow more clearly offensive uses of strikes with less scrutiny and regulation”.

Sterman, who has monitored the strikes, identified two main drivers behind the increase.

More than half the strikes have supported a US-backed campaign by Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region against ISIL-Somalia, launched after the group attacked a military convoy in December 2024.

The strikes have shifted from occasionally targeting senior figures to sustained operations aimed at members of the group who have hemmed themselves into the caves in the mountains in northern Somalia, Sterman added.

The remainder focus on al-Shabaab’s advances against Somali government forces in the south, as US strikes support a Somali National Army that has faced setbacks on the ground this year.

The February 1 operation that opened the campaign saw 16 F/A-18 Super Hornets launch from the USS Harry S Truman in the Red Sea, dropping 60 tonnes of munitions on cave complexes in the Golis Mountains. The strike killed 14 people, according to Africa Command.

However, the intensified operations have raised concerns about civilian casualties.

The investigative outlet Drop Site News reported in December that US air strikes and Somali forces killed at least 11 civilians, including seven children, during a November 15 operation in the Lower Jubba region, citing witnesses.

Africa Command confirmed conducting strikes to support Somali troops, but did not respond to Drop Site requests for comment on the civilian deaths.

The US military recently stopped providing civilian casualty assessments in its strike announcements.

According to the military publication Stars and Stripes, the pace of operations now exceeds even the US’s claimed counter-narcotics strikes in the Caribbean.

In the meantime, Trump launched racist verbal attacks earlier this month on Somali immigrants in the US state of Minnesota, as federal authorities prepared to launch a major immigration crackdown targeting hundreds of undocumented Somalis in the state of Minnesota.

His comments have been denounced in several quarters, from Mogadishu to Minneapolis.