Seven-year-old Abdiqadir was hit in a US airstrike. Without a $750 operation, he may lose his ability to walk

Abdiqadir Salah has shrapnel in his back and thigh but treatment costs $1,000. His mother says: ‘What’s worse than being [unable to] do anything for [my] wounded children?’ Photograph: Family View image in fullscreen Abdiqadir Salah has shrapnel in his back and thigh but treatment costs $1,000. His mother says: ‘What’s worse than being [unable to] do anything for [my] wounded children?’ Photograph: Family Seven-year-old Abdiqadir was hit in a US airstrike. Without a $750 operation, he may lose his ability to walk Abdiqadir Salah was pierced by shrapnel in a bombing that killed 12 in Somalia. But as the US denies civilians were hurt they face no hope of compensation Read more: Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes? A seven-year-old boy who was riddled with shrapnel during a deadly US airstrike in Somalia faces losing his ability to walk unless he has a £750 emergency operation. But Abdiqadir Salah’s family cannot afford the surgery and the US – which refuses to admit that any civilians were killed or injured during its attack six months ago – appears unwilling to pay compensation to those affected by airstrikes in Somalia. Why is the US bombing Somalia – and who are the airstrikes killing? Read more Shards of shrapnel are lodged in two places in Abdiqadir’s back and in his upper thigh after US airstrikes that killed at least 12 civilians, including eight children. It is the deadliest attack on civilians in Somalia during either Trump administration and one of the worst since the botched 1993 US military operation in Mogadishu known as Black Hawk Down . A Guardian investigation into the strikes in the town of Jamaame raises myriad questions over US intelligence, how the targets were selected and why children were hit while they were in the open and were likely to have been clearly identifiable to the drone’s strike team. His mother said Abdiqadir was in the street outside his family home in Jamaame on 15 November 2025 when he was struck by a missile. View image in fullscreen Marian Haji Abdi Guled fled the missiles with her three injured children, hiding in surrounding countryside. Photograph: Mohamed Gabobe “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 attack, Guled took her three injured children into the surrounding countryside to flee the drones. Her eldest, Mohamed, 16, had shrapnel lodged in his fingers, while her daughter Sumaya, 14, had three metal fragments lodged in her head, which have since been removed. Abdiqadir’s X-rays, which have been viewed by the Guardian, show shrapnel still lodged near his