A boy was wounded in U.S. airstrikes on Somalia in November 2025. By June 2026 — more than seven months later — he still had not received the surgery he needed to walk again.

The U.S. military said it was targeting al-Shabaab, a militant group, on November 14–15, 2025. AFRICOM, the U.S. military command for Africa, confirmed that Somalia's government agreed to the strikes. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth authorized them at President Trump's direction. The Pentagon said the strikes killed senior al-Shabaab leaders in Somalia and Libya.

This boy is one example among many. Amnesty International documented 21 civilian deaths from nine U.S. strikes between 2017 and 2020. Airwars, an organization that tracks airstrikes, has records of civilian harm from U.S. operations in Somalia going back to 2007. Neither group has complete numbers — they work in areas that are hard to reach and records are often incomplete.

The Strikes Are Happening More Often

November's strikes were not unusual. In just January 2026, AFRICOM launched 26 strikes in Somalia — more than in similar months before. The number of strikes has been climbing, especially under the current administration. When there are more strikes, there are more chances for mistakes — wrong targets, bad information, or people getting hurt who shouldn't.

The U.S. bases these strikes on a law from 2001 called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. But the U.S. government has stretched that law to apply to groups that didn't even exist in 2001. Secretary Hegseth's order to conduct these strikes follows the same pattern used by every administration since George W. Bush.

Al-Shabaab is the most powerful armed group in sub-Saharan Africa that is not a government. It controls large areas of southern and central Somalia, collects taxes, and can carry out complex attacks in major cities. Somalia's government asked the U.S. for air support because its own army is not strong enough to fight al-Shabaab alone. The government sees the airstrikes as necessary. But the families living near where the strikes happen see things differently.

Who Pays When Things Go Wrong?

That is where this boy's case matters most. The U.S. military does not publicly release the details of how it investigates civilian deaths. When Amnesty International published its report in 2020, the U.S. military disagreed with some of the findings but did not share how it had investigated the claims. In 2022, the Department of Defense updated its rules about what to do when civilians are hurt in airstrikes. It said the military should provide money and medical help to victims. But these rules are not always followed, and the government does not usually tell the public whether they were applied in specific cases.

A boy waiting seven months for surgery is more than just a health problem. It raises a question: Does the U.S. government actually help civilians hurt by its airstrikes, or is helping them just something it says it will do? This is especially important in Somalia, where the U.S. does not get as much attention from the media as in other places where American troops are involved.

For nearly 20 years, the U.S. has been carrying out airstrikes in Somalia under five different presidents. The number of strikes keeps going up. Al-Shabaab is still there — it has not been defeated. The number of civilians hurt is not exactly known, often disputed, and rarely tested in court. But it keeps growing.