Officials reported that the United States launched an air strike in Somalia targeting weapons and equipment for the Al-Shabaab movement near an African Union military base that had been attacked the previous day by the militant movement.
The Polo Marer base, located 120 km southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, which houses a Ugandan force, was attacked by the jihadist movement linked to Al-Qaeda, which has been fighting since 2007 the federal government supported by the international community.
The US Africa Command said in a statement that it had “destroyed weapons and equipment illegally seized by al-Shabaab fighters,” without specifying when and where these weapons were stolen.
It added that it “launched an air strike against militants in the vicinity” of the Bulo Marer base on Friday in support of the Somali federal government and the African Union peacekeeping force known as “ATMIS”.
Local residents and a Somali military commander told AFP that Al-Shabaab fighters stormed the base with a car bomb, which led to an armed clash.
It was not immediately known whether the Al-Shabaab attack resulted in casualties.
The US command said its “initial assessment is that no civilians were injured or killed” in its strike.
Pro-government forces backed by Atmis launched an offensive last August against al-Shabaab, which has been waging an insurgency in this fragile nation in the Horn of Africa for more than 15 years.
The African Union force in Somalia “ATMIS”, which includes about 20,000 soldiers, police and civilians from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, replaced in April 2022 the United Nations force that had been deployed since 2007 to combat the Al-Shabaab insurgency.
