The human toll of America's escalating airstrikes in Somalia

Nearly a year after an airstrike believed to have been carried out by the US in southern Somalia left shrapnel embedded in her son's body, Maryam Haji Abdi Guled still walks him to school every day. She fears another child will knock him over while playing and shift the metal fragment near his hip — doctors have warned that surgery to remove it could leave him paralysed.

Her son, Abdiqadir Salah, was just seven when he was wounded in the attack in November 2025, during a military campaign involving US airstrikes and Somali ground forces around the town of Jamaame in Jubaland state.

Maryam is one of many survivors interviewed by Al Jazeera in recent months. They said relatives were killed or seriously injured during the campaign. Their accounts describe deaths, families forced from their homes, lost livelihoods and injuries that continue to shape their lives.

The testimonies come as US airstrikes targeting armed groups in Somalia have risen sharply under President Donald Trump.

According to public records from US Africa Command (AFRICOM), 84 airstrikes had been recorded in Somalia by the end of September 2026. The New America Foundation, which independently tracks the campaign, counts 88 over the same period.

The US military acknowledges it carried out airstrikes in the area on 14 and 15 November 2025, but denies that its aircraft caused civilian casualties.

AFRICOM's finding and the conflicting accounts

AFRICOM told Al Jazeera it had completed its assessment of reports that the US campaign killed 10 to 12 civilians and destroyed homes and businesses in Jamaame. It concluded that the information reviewed did not meet the "more likely than not" standard the military uses to determine whether a US airstrike caused the reported harm.

That conclusion is not a confirmation that US airstrikes caused no harm. AFRICOM said the evidence was insufficient to establish that US operations "more likely than not" caused the reported casualties and damage. The command said it could reopen the assessment if new information emerged that might change the conclusion.

Al Jazeera asked whether investigators had spoken directly with survivors, relatives of the dead, hospital staff, local authorities or other witnesses. AFRICOM did not say clearly whether it had done so, nor did it publish the evidence underpinning its assessment.

The morning under bombardment

Maryam recalls the morning aircraft appeared over Jamaame. She was preparing breakfast after her children came home from school when she heard a roar overhead. The planes had become so familiar that the family no longer treated the sound as unusual.

"The planes never left us, day or night, and we got used to them," she said.

Her children ran outside toward the noise, and Maryam ran after them to get them back inside before the whole family fled. Then a shell landed nearby, followed by another explosion close to the front door. More strikes followed around the house.

Maryam believes the attack on her home was carried out by a US drone, the kind of aircraft that had been circling the town before the bombardment.

Ugaas Ahmed Ugaas Said Ali, a Bimaal clan elder who remains in regular contact with affected families, said the suffering extends far beyond those who managed to leave Jamaame.

"Maryam is one of the lucky ones who could reach medical care. Many injured people stayed in the town after the campaign and could not get to Mogadishu," he said.

During the explosions, Maryam was separated from her children. Three of her six children were injured, and Abdiqadir was the most seriously hurt.

A journey of more than 24 hours for medical care

Maryam said one shell hit the ground without exploding, while other strikes killed people nearby. It took her a day and a night to get her son to a medical facility in Mogadishu. Throughout the journey of more than 24 hours, the boy bled and was in pain.

According to the Jubaland authorities, Somali government and regional forces, including the US-trained Danab commando unit, launched a campaign against positions held by the armed group al-Shabab in villages around the town. The authorities said at least 56 al-Shabab fighters were killed and 20 captured. Al Jazeera could not independently verify those figures.

AFRICOM declined to disclose the number of airstrikes or the weapons used, citing operational security. Witnesses interviewed by Al Jazeera said the strikes came without warning. Three people — two of whom said they had lost relatives and one whose home was destroyed — declined to speak publicly for safety reasons.

Ali said residents are afraid to discuss harm from airstrikes and government campaigns for fear of retaliation.

Documented harm

A monitoring network led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recorded 12 civilians killed in fighting and airstrikes around Jamaame between 16 and 18 November 2025. The figure covers different phases of the campaign, which involved both airstrikes and ground fighting, making it difficult to determine which force was responsible for each death.

The network also recorded 22,800 people leaving Jamaame and nearby villages over the same period, describing the displacement as "rapid and large-scale". The report noted damage to shops and warehouses, restrictions on civilian movement in al-Shabab-controlled areas, and signs of psychological trauma among those who escaped.

For Ali Aden Borrow, a 52-year-old farmer from Jamaame, the campaign devastated his family. While away from home, he received a phone call telling him his wife had been hit. Nine months pregnant, she was trying to gather her children and flee the fighting when shrapnel from a strike, which he described as hitting her neck. Both she and the unborn baby died.

Their three surviving children, two girls and a boy, went to live with their grandmother. Ali has been moving between villages and Kismayo, Jubaland's de facto capital, looking for work and trying to provide for his children. The cost of food, travel and essentials has left him in debt. He said the family has received very little outside support.

Another farmer, Nuur Ali Nuur, was working in his fields when his wife was injured during the same period of fighting. He told Al Jazeera that shrapnel from a strike struck her lower body and right hand, leaving her paralysed from the waist down. Their youngest daughter, still breastfeeding, was slightly injured. Neighbours helped bring his wife to hospital while he struggled to care for five children.

Nuur said he did not have enough money to get his wife to better medical care in time and still owes treatment costs. Even the trip to Kismayo depended on persuading a driver to let him pay later.

Long-lasting consequences

Anna Zahn, who heads archiving at the US-based organisation Airwars, said the consequences of airstrikes can last for years. Injuries are often under-reported in Somalia, where treatment can be costly and prolonged.

"In practice, the necessary medical services may not even exist, because the very airstrikes that cause the injuries may have destroyed the infrastructure needed — roads, vehicles, hospitals, power plants — to provide specialised and long-term medical care," Zahn said.

Earlier research by the peace organisation PAX in Jubaland documented chronic injuries, lost livelihoods, displacement and psychological trauma after airstrikes attributed to the US. The researchers said they could not establish the target status of those involved in most of the cases they examined.

Questions about targeting

On 13 September 2025, AFRICOM carried out an airstrike near Badhan in northern Somalia and said it had killed Omar Abdullahi, a local clan leader travelling in a convoy. The command later identified him as an al-Shabab weapons trafficker.

Puntland's criminal investigation agency later said Abdullahi had no criminal record and was not under investigation. Somali Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi objected in parliament, arguing that Abdullahi could have been interrogated instead of targeted.

AFRICOM told Al Jazeera that its civilian harm assessment of the strike did not meet the "more likely than not" standard for attributing civilian harm to US operations. Asked whether it still considered Abdullahi an al-Shabab weapons trafficker, what evidence supported that allegation and whether the decision to strike was being reviewed, AFRICOM did not respond directly.

The command distinguishes between deliberate airstrikes, which go through multiple layers of review, and defensive strikes against imminent threats. Its broad definition of "fighter" includes those deemed to provide material support to the conflict, raising questions about how such determinations are made and how that criterion affects the risk to civilians.

The US says its airstrikes are coordinated with the Somali federal government. Somalia's defence ministry did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment.

An expanding air campaign

According to Zahn, the number of airstrikes in Trump's second term is approaching the total for his entire first term, at roughly four times the pace under former President Joe Biden. Airwars data analysed for a separate investigation recorded at least 216 civilians killed or injured in US airstrikes in Somalia from 2007 to the end of May 2025. The figure reflects only cases the organisation could document, not an estimate of total harm, and does not include the campaign around Jamaame.

US airstrikes in Somalia began nearly two decades ago, when Washington launched attacks on fighters suspected of links to al-Qaeda in 2007. The campaign later expanded into long-running military support for Somali forces fighting al-Shabab and, more recently, the ISIL-linked group in Somalia.

Under Trump, the US has loosened restrictions on the authority to approve airstrikes. The administration's 2026 "counterterrorism" strategy states that greater approval authority was returned to military commanders shortly after Trump took office, reversing the more centralised process under Biden.

General Dagvin Anderson, commander of AFRICOM, welcomed the increased operational flexibility, saying it allows faster responses and quicker strikes when additional US military assets are available. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud also acknowledged the change at the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2025: "Under President Trump, it is much bigger and much easier than before."

US officials argue that al-Shabab remains a direct threat to American interests. Yet the expanded airstrikes have not eliminated al-Shabab, which has repeatedly retaken territory after campaigns by Somali and allied forces.

David Sterman, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation, said US activity under Trump initially focused on the ISIL-linked group in northern Somalia in early 2025, but gradually shifted back to the south during 2026, the area that has long been the main focus of the campaign against al-Shabab.

Ahmed Suleiman Hussein, a Somali national security official, wrote on X in May that government research showed civilian harm from airstrikes can breed resentment that al-Shabab and the ISIL-linked group can exploit for propaganda and recruitment. Somalia subsequently adopted a national civilian protection policy, which Hussein said needs to be consistently integrated into "counterterrorism" operations.

A family that cannot return

For Maryam, the Jamaame campaign has changed almost every aspect of her family's life. After her children were injured, she first fled to the countryside, but no hospital was able to treat Abdiqadir.

She eventually made the roughly 24-hour journey to Mogadishu, at times holding her son against her body because his wounds meant he could not sit or stand without severe pain. "He was bleeding in the car and the road was very bumpy," she said.

In the capital, Maryam went from hospital to hospital seeking treatment. Doctors warned that removing the shrapnel near Abdiqadir's hip could kill him or leave him paralysed, she said. At some hospitals she was asked to sign waivers absolving medical staff of liability if surgery caused further harm. "I said: 'No, I will not sign. Bring my son out here,'" she recalled. Another hospital suggested amputation, which she also refused.

In September 2026, after a fundraising campaign by The Guardian helped cover treatment costs, Abdiqadir underwent surgery in Mogadishu. Doctors removed two fragments but left one in place because of the risk of paralysis. "He can play and move now, and we cannot take that risk," Maryam said.

She is staying in Mogadishu to keep her son near medical care and cannot resume the farming and livestock work that once supported the family in Jamaame. "I cannot go back there now. This child will not get medical care there, and the situation we fled yesterday is still there — something worse could even happen," she said.

Source: Al Jazeera