A US air raid, carried with both warplanes and drones, killed more than 150 al-Shabaab militants in Somalia March 5, with the Pentagon citing an "imminent threat" to US and African Union forces. Spokesman Cpt. Jeff Davis said a "large-scale" attack was being prepared at the camp. The target, identified as "Raso Camp," was in Bulobarde province, about 200 kilometers north of the capital, Mogadishu. Al-Shabab was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has continued to launch frequent attacks in its bid to overthrow the Western-backed government—including the twin bombing at a busy restaurant in the Somali city of Baidoa that killed 30 on Feb. 28.
The actual impacts of the air-raid are hard to determine. The US and the Kenyan military have launched multiple air-strikes against Shabaab's fighters and top leaders. Most recently, in December the US said it killed Abdirahman Sandhere AKA "Ukash" and two other "associates" in an airs-trike on an undisclosed location in Somalia. But Shabaab has continued to launch ambushes on Kenyan and Ethiopian-led African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM [12]) forces, and has regained control of several towns in the south since Sandhere was killed. On March 7, the Australian navy said it had seized a huge cache of weapons on a fishing boat off the coast of Oman that was apparently heading for insurgents in Somalia. (BBC News [13], Long War Journal [14], March 7; BBC News [15], Feb. 29)
Al-Shabaab is generally said to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, but some reports indicate [16] that it has joined the ISIS franchise [17].
