The United States Africa Command, AFRICOM, issued a statement on 25th February 2020 claiming that its precision airstrike on February 22nd killed 1 terrorist in Saakow, 150 kilometers north of Jilib the headquarters of the Al-Qaeda branch in Somalia, Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahideen. The intelligence brief further reported that the particular terrorist was a primary planner of the Manda Bay US Army Camp Simba Airstrip terrorist attack in January 2020. However, it is the subsequent precision airstrike at Jilib on 24th February that is very interesting. AFRICOM issued a statement claiming it killed 1 Al-Shabaab terrorists based on initial assessment. The particular airstrike was intelligence led and primarily based on geo-tracking and highly credible HUMINT, SIGNIT, GEOINT, & CYBINT/DNINT on a group of Al-Qaeda network within Al-Shabaab and operating in the terrorist controlled area.
Hormund Telecom issued a statement claiming that the terrorist killed in Jilib was its Operations Director. Mohamud Haji Sirad, 55, a local manager of Hormuud, Somalia’s largest telecom company, was killed when two missiles struck his farm outside Jilib town. The AFRICOM BDA was precise, 1 terrorist was killed, and Hormund was categorical, their Operations Directors was killed by the airstrike. Both the U.S. Africa Command and Somalia’s government said the airstrike killed a member of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group further confirming the link between the terrorists and the telecom.
The latest-particular AFRICOM drone-strikes have targeted housed or stationery targets along River Juba in Middle Juba prefecture along a 200 kilometers stretch touching 3 key Al-Shabaab towns, Saakow, Dujuma, and Jilib. All 3 airstrikes were related and the targets were connected to each other. The US-Camp Simba attack was an Al-Qaeda attack not an Al-Shabaab operation despite being largely logistically-supported by the affiliate. This quantifies previous intelligence reports that the Hormund Telecom workers double up to terrorists operatives and further confirms that Hormund Telecom continues to support and finance terrorism in East Africa.
