Mogadishu/Havana/The United States Military Command in Africa (Africom) published this Wednesday a report on its operations in which it denies that the two Cuban doctors kidnapped by the jihadist group Al Shabab in Somalia died in one of its air attacks in the region, last February 15. As the US authorities had previously stated, the report confirms that a bombing was carried out near the town of Jilib (in the south), where the doctors supposedly died, but denied that this attack caused their death, as the terrorists have claimed.
“On 17 February 2024, the command received a report from a digital media outlet that two civilians were killed as a result of a US military operation in the vicinity of Jilib, Somalia, on 15 February 2024,” Africom stated. . “The command completed a review of available information and assessed that the U.S. airstrike conducted on February 15, 2024 did not cause harm to civilians,” the report concluded.
On February 17, Al Shabab assured that two Cuban doctors kidnapped by that organization in 2019 died in an air attack by the United States Army in Somalia, information that has not been officially confirmed by the authorities of that country. “The aerial bombardment, which began at around 00:10 local time, targeted a house in Jilib and instantly killed Assel Herrera and Landy Rodríguez, captured on April 12, 2019” in northern Kenya, said the jihadist group in a statement.
Al Shabab assured that two Cuban doctors kidnapped by that organization in 2019 died in the air attack
Al Shabab also published two photographs of the alleged corpse of Herrera Correa, with a naked torso and traces of blood on his body, after the attack by US drones. The jihadists also accused the United States of targeting their prisoners and assured that, in previous years, it has attacked at least two of their enclaves with this objective.
Surgeon Landy Rodríguez Hernández and general medicine specialist Assel Herrera Correa were kidnapped on April 12, 2019 in the Kenyan city of Mandera, bordering Somalia and a target of jihadist attacks in the past. The two doctors were traveling, as was their custom, in a convoy to the Mandera hospital protected by armed escorts, when they were intercepted after a shootout in which one of the police officers who was ensuring their safety died.
In May 2019, traditional leaders from Kenya and Somalia who traveled to the Somali region of Jubaland, controlled by Al Shabab, to negotiate on behalf of the doctors, confessed to having seen doctors providing medical care to the local population. According to the mediators, the kidnappers even demanded 1.5 million dollars as a condition for their release, the Kenyan press reported at the time.
Herrera and Rodríguez were part of a contingent of a hundred Cuban professionals who arrived in Kenya in 2018.
Herrera and Rodríguez were part of a contingent of a hundred Cuban professionals who arrived in Kenya in 2018 in application of a bilateral agreement to improve access to specialized health services in the African country. For their part, the Cuban authorities have explained that since the kidnapping of the health workers, the Government has made “enormous” efforts to bring them back. When it became known about the US attack, the president of Parliament Esteban Lazo traveled to Kenya to learn details about the doctors, but the fruits of that meeting and other “cooperations” to which they have alluded have remained outside the population. .
Regarding this latest statement from Africom, the Cuban Foreign Ministry and the official press have not yet offered a response.
The United States has been involved in military operations against Al Shabab, in cooperation with the Somali Army, since at least 2007. Somalia is experiencing an intensification of military offensives against the terrorist group after Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud announced in August 2022 a “total war” against the jihadists.
Since then, Africom has carried out numerous airstrikes against Al Shabab. The terrorist group, affiliated with Al Qaeda since 2012, frequently carries out attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and other places in the country to overthrow the central government – backed by the international community – and establish an Islamic State. The group controls rural areas of central and southern Somalia, and also attacks neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.
