Somalia’s security forces in the northeastern semiautonomous state of Puntland announced that they killed around 60 terrorists belonging to ISIS (Daesh).

The spokesperson for the Puntland Counter-Terrorism Operation, Gen. Mohamoud Fadhigo, briefed journalists that raids involved a coordinated ground and air attack against the terrorists in the mountainous region of the Bari region.

“The operation against the terrorists continues, and the latest fighting in the Haraaryo area killed between 60 to 65 terrorists,” he stated. He also sent his “condolences to those who were martyred defending the country against the terrorists.”

Moreover, a day earlier, Security forces repulsed ISIS attacks that employed suicide bombers on a military headquarters in the Bari area. As reported by the media, around 15 attackers, including suicide bombers, were annihilated in the episode.

In the meantime, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) stated that a February 1 airstrike it launched against ISIS annihilated 14 terrorists, including a senior commander.

The airstrike involved senior ISIS-Somalia supervision in a series of cave complexes about 50 miles southeast of the port city of Bosaso, the capital of the northeastern Bari region. Ahmed Maeleninine was among those killed, a major ISIS recruiter, funder and external operations chief “responsible for the deployment of jihadists into the United States and across Europe.”

Somalia has been a prime player in the campaign against terrorism in its north-eastern front, the semi-autonomous state of Puntland. While numerically smaller than al-Shabaab, ISIS-Somalia is considered an up-and-coming threat due to its strategic location and location in the international IS network. The group is suspected to be largely made up of foreign fighters from numerous African countries and elsewhere.

The terrorist organization came into being in Somalia late in 2015 after pro-Islamic State leaders defected from al-Shabaab. In October 2016, IS-Somalia briefly took the seaport town of Qandala before they were pushed out by local militants. In May 2024, a US airstrike is said to have targeted Abdulqadir Mumin, the IS-Somalia founder and arguably serving as the global caliph at the time.