US strikes terror group al-Shabaab in Somalia

The United States military has launched another strike in Somalia in a month to target terror group al-Shabaab in the region.The Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook, said that the airstrike conducted on Thursday targeted a senior leader, Hassan Ali Dhoore, of al-Shabaab terror group, reports the Guardian.

Cook, however, did not confirm if Dhoore was killed in the strike.

Any assessment of the civilians or militant casualties was not provided by Cook.

US warplanes and drones had last month attacked a Somali training camp for al-Shabaab, killing more than 100 people.

Cook claimed al-Shabaab was part of al-Qaida, which places asserted legal authority for the strike under the umbrella of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a broad wellspring of counterterrorism authorities meant to respond to the 9/11 attacks.

A video in 2012 announced the merger of al-Shabaab and al-Qaida.

Asserting that Dhoore played a key role in the 2014 Mogadishu airport attacks, Cook said that he was directly responsible for the attack on a Mogadishu hotel last year that claimed 15 lives.

United States, military, strike, Somalia, terror group, al Shabaab