The U.S. conducted three airstrikes targeting al-Shabaab militants in the Lower Shabelle region of southern Somalia on Sunday, 5 April, Africa Command said on Monday.
The strikes, which AFRICOM said killed eight al-Shabaab militants and no civilians, occurred on Sunday, April 5 near the town of Mubaraak.
The U.S. military has increased its targeted strikes against al-Shabaab since 2014, part of a campaign to beat back the militant organization and prop up forces of Somalia’s federal government, which is based in Mogadishu.
U.S. Special Operations Forces and Turkish troops are training Somali National Army forces under the federal government.
The African Union has contributed some 20,000 troops to the fight under the banner of a peacekeeping mission known as AMISOM, or African Union Mission in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab, an Islamist movement with close ties to al-Qaeda, has sought to overthrow the Somali government for more than a decade. AMISOM drove the militants from Mogadishu in 2011, but al-Shabaab still launches deadly attacks on civilians and security personnel in the capital and control swaths of Somalia’s rural south.