This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A US airstrike in Somalia has killed 52 Islamic militants from al-Shabaab, military officials have said.

The strike comes days after a deadly attack by the extremist organisation on a luxury hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya.

A statement from the US Africa command said no civilians had been injured or killed in the strike, which was launched on Saturday in response to an attack by a “large group” of militants against local Somali forces in a fiercely contested zone south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Twenty-one people died in the attack on Nairobi’s dusitD2 hotel complex.

Kenyan police have arrested the wife and father of a man identified as the suicide bomber in the attack, police officials said.

The attacker, one of five al-Shabaab militants who stormed the complex on Tuesday, was identified as 25-year-old Mahir Khalid Riziki, who grew up in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.

“He grew up in Mombasa and that is where he was recruited into al-Shabaab,” he said, adding that Riziki had previously been involved in attacks targeting security forces and had travelled to Somalia.

Though forced out of major cities, al-Shabaab controls large parts of rural southern and central Somalia and continues to carry out high-profile suicide bombings and other attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere.

The group has also conducted a series of assaults on military installations in the unstable east African country, though it has sustained significant casualties.

The US has stepped up airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia since Donald Trump took office, carrying out at least 47 strikes last year. Some have targeted top leaders or key financial officials. Al-Shabaab funds its operations through an extensive network of “taxation” and extortion.

In October, the US said an airstrike killed about 60 fighters near the al-Shabaab-controlled community of Harardhere in Mudug province in central Somalia.

Research by the Mogadishu-based Hiraan Institute suggests that the organisation has largely adapted to the new threat and that the use of air power alone is likely to be insufficient to defeat the group, which has been fighting to impose an extreme version of Islamic law on Somalia for more than a decade.

Civilian casualties blamed on the US have been a factor in al-Shabaab recruitment.

Al-Shabaab, which is an affiliate of al-Qaida, was responsible for a bloody assault on a mall in the Kenyan capital in 2013.