Mohamed Gabobe in Mogadishu and Mark TownsendThursday June 18, 2026
Abdiqadir Salah’s family is racing against time. The seven-year-old was hit by shrapnel in a US airstrike in Somalia and now needs a £750 emergency operation to keep him from losing the ability to walk. Photograph: Family
His wounds are severe, but so is the family’s predicament. They cannot pay for the surgery, and the United States – which has refused to acknowledge that any civilians were killed or injured in the strike six months ago – appears unwilling to offer compensation to those harmed in its air campaign in Somalia.
Shrapnel remains embedded in two places in Abdiqadir’s back and in his upper thigh after the US strikes that killed at least 12 civilians, among them eight children.
The attack was the deadliest on civilians in Somalia under either Trump administration, and one of the worst since the disastrous 1993 US operation in Mogadishu, known as Black Hawk Down.
A Guardian investigation into the strikes in Jamaame has surfaced serious questions about US intelligence, the process used to choose the targets and why children were struck while outside and apparently visible to the drone strike team.
His mother said Abdiqadir was in the street outside the family home in Jamaame on 15 November 2025 when a missile hit him.
“That’s where three of my children got wounded. All three of them were laying on the ground covered in blood,” said Marian Haji Abdi Guled.
“When I tried to tend to them, shells began falling everywhere. Every step you took, or direction you turned, there were shells and missiles raining everywhere.
“There was no warning before the strikes but we could [hear] drones hovering above town before the strikes. It was very loud.”
After the bombing, Guled carried her three injured children into the surrounding countryside in an attempt to escape the drones.
Her eldest, Mohamed, 16, had shrapnel lodged in his fingers, while her daughter Sumaya, 14, had three metal fragments in her head, since removed. X-rays of Abdiqadir, seen by the Guardian, show shrapnel still lodged near his hip socket after entering through his lower back.
“They bled throughout the night,” Guled said. “We couldn’t leave the countryside because we feared the drones hovering above would bomb us again.”
The following day, Guled travelled 40 miles (60km) to Jilib, the de facto capital of the territory controlled by the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, the target the US said it was striking in Jamaame in November.
The hospital there could not treat them. After borrowing money for the two-day trip, Guled then travelled with Abdiqadir and his sister to Mogadishu.
“My oldest still has shrapnel lodged in his body but I left him back in Jamaame because I couldn’t afford to take him to Mogadishu and took the younger ones.
“During the two nights and two days to reach Mogadishu, we couldn’t even eat anything. All I thought about was saving my children.”
Doctors say they must operate to remove the shrapnel from Abdiqadir. Photograph: Mohamed Gabobe
Although her daughter received treatment in the capital, Abdiqadir still needs urgent care.
Doctors at Kaafi hospital in central Mogadishu told his mother that the fragments inside the boy must be removed quickly to prevent permanent damage.
“They [doctors] told me if the shrapnel isn’t removed from his body, it could affect his ability to continue walking,” Guled said.
“But I don’t have $1,000 [£750] needed for the operation to remove the shrapnel from my son’s body. What’s worse than being a mother who can’t do anything for her wounded children?”
Though she cannot afford the procedure, Guled has remained in Mogadishu because it is the only place where her son can receive the treatment he needs. But with accommodation in the capital costing nearly £190 a month, the family has no realistic way to save enough for the operation.
Guled with Abdiqadir, and her daughter, Sumaya. Photograph: Mohamed Gabobe
The US has not paid compensation to any Somali civilians killed or injured in airstrikes. Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon also quietly ended a programme that made it a legal requirement to prevent and respond to civilian deaths.
“I don’t know where the money [for the operation] will come from,” Guled said. “I left the children’s father back at the farm in Jamaame to protect our crops from wild animals. He also doesn’t have money to reach Mogadishu.”
The strikes were carried out alongside Somali ground forces in a joint operation led by US Africa command, leaving open the possibility that some casualties were caused by those troops.
Witness accounts, however, consistently describe the Jamaame injuries and deaths as the result of bombs dropped from drones, not fire from ground forces. US officials declined to answer questions about the role of Somali forces in the attack.
Guled says she has no doubt where the strike came from. She insists her children were not hit by infantry weapons such as mortars. “It is the Americans who are responsible for our suffering,” she said.
The US Department of War did not respond to a series of detailed questions regarding the airstrikes on Jamaame.
