A 7-year-old boy left with shrapnel embedded in his body after a deadly U.S. airstrike in Somalia faces the prospect of losing his ability to walk unless he receives emergency surgery costing 750 dollars.
Abdiqadir Salah suffered shrapnel injuries to two spots on his back and one on his upper thigh during U.S. airstrikes in November 2025 in the town of Jamaame. The attack killed at least 12 civilians, including eight children, and is considered the deadliest strike on civilians in Somalia under President Trump and one of the worst since the 1993 U.S. military campaign in Mogadishu.
His mother, Marian Haji Abdi Guled, recounted that on November 15, 2025, Abdiqadir was playing on the street in front of their home in Jamaame when he was hit. “All three of my children were wounded, lying on the ground covered in blood. There was no warning, but we heard drones hovering over the town before the attacks,” Guled said.
After the incident, Guled fled with her three injured children to a rural area. Mohamed, 16, had shrapnel in his finger; Sumaya, 14, had three metal fragments in her head that were extracted. For Abdiqadir, doctors at Kaafi Hospital in Mogadishu said the shrapnel remains inside him and could affect his ability to walk if not surgically removed promptly.
“The doctors say if the shrapnel is not removed, it could affect my son’s ability to walk. But I don’t have the 1,000 dollars needed for the surgery,” Guled said in despair.
The family cannot afford the operation. Monthly rent in the capital Mogadishu is nearly 190 dollars, leaving no savings for the procedure. Abdiqadir’s father stayed behind at the farm in Jamaame to protect the crops and lacks funds to travel to the capital.
An investigation by The Guardian found that the U.S. has never compensated any Somali civilians killed or wounded in airstrikes. Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon quietly scrapped a program requiring legal accountability for preventing and responding to civilian deaths.
The Pentagon did not respond to detailed questions about the Jamaame airstrike. The strikes were conducted alongside Somali ground forces in a joint operation led by the U.S. Africa Command targeting al-Shabaab militants. However, witnesses insist the casualties in Jamaame were caused by drone bombs, not ground fire.
“The Americans are responsible for our suffering,” Guled said.
