The US military has conducted an airstrike targeting a senior al-Shabaab leader in Somalia, according to Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.<\/p>\n
“The strike took place in the vicinity of Saakow, Somalia,”<\/em> the Defense Department has announced.<\/p>\n The military is still assessing the results of the operation, but at this time there is no reason to believe there were any \u201ccivilian or bystander casualties,\u201d<\/em> the Pentagon said in a statement.<\/p>\n Additional information will be provided \u201cwhen appropriate, as details become available,”<\/em> it added.<\/p>\n Al-Shabaab, translated as the “The Youth,” is an al-Qaeda-linked extremist group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US. Its basic goal is to create a fundamentalist Islamic state \u2013 a caliphate \u2013 in Somalia.<\/p>\n Last week, the group claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day attack on the main African Union (AU) base in Mogadishu, which killed at least three soldiers and two civilian contractors.<\/p>\n Al-Shabaab’s terrorist activities most notably include coordinated suicide bombings in Uganda’s capital in 2010 and a deadly raid on a Nairobi mall in 2013.<\/p>\n The US National Counterterrorism Center says that \u201cAl-Shabaab is responsible for the assassination of Somali peace activists, international aid workers, numerous civil society figures, and journalists.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Washington suspects that Al-Shabaab successfully recruited Somali-Americans to possibly orchestrate strikes on American soil.<\/p>\n