(Previous Incident Code: SOM053)

On November 17th, US Africa Command sent the Bureau of Investigative Journalism a list of previously unreported strikes, which included this one. No casualties were reported.

An AFRICOM spokesperson explained that their goal “is to be as transparent as possible while taking into account operational security, force protection and diplomatic sensitivities.” It therefore did not proactively release information about all of its strikes. It was limited to confirming or denying US operations took place when asked directly for those strikes that were not cleared to be reported in press releases.

The spokesperson would not say specifically where the attacks hit, telling the Bureau the best they could say was all the unreported strikes were conducted in southern Somalia, “for operational security reasons”.

However in December 2018, AFRICOM informed a US investigative journalist that this event “was in the vicinity of Tortoroow.”

At the time, Xinhua news agency had reported that “Somalia National Army (SNA)-backed by the African Union peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) on Friday destroyed an Al-Shabaab compound in southern Somalia.

“Somali National Army forces conducted an operation today which resulted in the destruction of a known Al-Shabaab compound around Tortoroow,” said AMISOM. The AU mission said the Somali forces were able to successfully reduce the ability of the terrorists to conduct senseless acts of violence against the people.”