MOGADISHU, Somalia – Airstrikes carried out by the U.S. military have killed a top ISIL leader and 40 other militants in the Al-Maskad mountains, located in the Bari region of Puntland state in northern Somalia.
Puntland state confirmed that Abdirahman Fardhiye, an attack planner for ISIL, was killed along with dozens, including foreign jihadists, in the strikes.
Late on Saturday, President Donald Trump said he ordered “precision military air strikes on a senior ISIL attack planner and other terrorists.”
Fardhiye, along with the group’s leader Abdulqadir Mumin, is believed to have defected from Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-linked group in central Somalia in 2015.
He was seen as one of the group’s leaders and had close ties with Mumin. The U.S. accused him of masterminding the group’s first attack in Bossaso in 2017.
Since then, the U.S. has viewed him as a planner for attacks against businesspeople who refused to pay the taxes imposed by his group.
Fardhiye is also reported to have successfully forced businessmen to pay $100,000 in a single month.
For two months, Puntland military forces have been seizing major bases from the group as the regional state launched an operation dubbed “Hilaac.”
The region pledged to eliminate the group from Al-Maskad in the Bari region, where they had major bases to launch deadly attacks.
The recent strikes mark a major victory in the first phase of the Hilaac operation.
ISIL has a small presence in Somalia, but security experts have warned of growing activity.
However, the number of the group’s fighters is estimated to be in the hundreds, mostly scattered in the Al-Maskaad, according to the International Crisis Group.
