US forces have killed one of the region’s key leaders of the IS terrorist militia in Somalia. The operation in the north of the country led to the death of Bilal al-Sudani and around ten other supporters of the extremists, the White House said.
Al-Sudani was a “key actor and mediator for the global network” of IS. Before he joined IS, he worked for the Islamist terrorist militia Al-Shabaab. The US government did not provide specific details on the nature of the military operation.
US soldiers or civilians were not killed or seriously wounded in the operation, it said. The aim of the mission was actually to capture al-Sudani. However, this was ultimately not possible because of the “reaction of the enemy forces”. The deployment itself had been extensively rehearsed by the US armed forces in advance.
The USA supports Somalia in the fight against Islamists with drones, among other things. The crisis state on the Horn of Africa with around 16 million inhabitants has been rocked by terrorist attacks and other acts of violence for years, especially by Al-Shabaab. Almost a year ago, the US military killed the then IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Kurashi in Syria.
