U.S. suffers first combat death in Somalia since ’93

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A U.S. service member has been killed in Somalia during an operation against the extremist group al-Shabab — the first U.S. combat death there in more than two decades — as the United States steps up its fight against the al-Qaida-linked organization in a country that remains largely chaos.

“We do not believe there has been a case where a U.S. service member has been killed in combat action in Somalia since the incident there in 1993,” U.S. Africa Command spokesman Patrick Barnes said Friday. The United States pulled out of Somalia after that incident in which two helicopters were shot down in the capital, Mogadishu, and bodies of Americans were dragged through the streets.

In a statement, the U.S. Africa Command said the service member — described by the Washington Post as a Navy SEAL — was killed Thursday during the operation about 40 miles west of Mogadishu. Two other service members were wounded, the Pentagon said.

Raid on radio station

A Somali intelligence official said U.S. forces killed at least six people during the raid on a building housing al-Shabab’s Andalus radio station at a farm near Dare Salaam village. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the dead included al-Shabab journalists.

The deputy governor of Lower Shabelle region, Omar Mohamud Elmi, said that another goal of the raid was to “surgically target” senior al-Shabab members hiding in the area. He acknowledged “casualties on our side” but said the extremist group lost far more people. He did not give details.

Logistics training

The U.S. special operations troops came under fire after U.S. aircraft delivered Somali forces to the target area, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, told reporters. He said the U.S. troops were “a distance back” from the compound which had been associated with attacks on nearby facilities used by the U.S. and Somali partners.

Al-Shabab claimed it had thwarted “an air landing operation by U.S. special forces,” with a number of them killed or wounded, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Both the United States and Somalia in recent weeks have declared new efforts against al-Shabab. Last month, the U.S. military announced it was sending dozens of regular troops to Somalia in the largest such deployment to the country in roughly two decades. The U.S. Africa Command said the deployment was for logistics training of Somalia’s army.

The U.S. in recent years has sent a small number of special operations forces and counterterrorism advisers to Somalia and carried out a number of airstrikes against al-Shabab.