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The Department of Defense on Saturday identified the American service member killed during a June 8 mission in Somalia against terror group Al-Shabaab as 26-year-old Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Conrad of Chandler, Arizona

  • Conrad, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was killed by indirect enemy fire on June 8th when U.S. service members deployed alongside some 800 Somali and Kenyan troops southwest of Mogadishu came under small arms and mortar fire.
DoD Identifies US Service Member Killed In Somalia

Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Conrad, 26, of Chandler, Arizona, died June 8, in Somalia of injuries
sustained from enemy indirect fire. The incident is under investigation.Department of Defense photo

  • The attack came one week after the Pentagon killed 27 Al-Shabab fighters in a lone airstrike in northwest Somalia in what officials characterized to Task & Purpose as the deadliest single U.S. airstrike in the country to date.
  • Conrad belonged to the same Green Beret unit that lost four service members during the October 2017 ambush in Niger, after which U.S. Africa Command chief Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser pledged “increased the firepower … increased ISR intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity … increased various response times.”
Jared Keller
Jared Keller

Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Contact the author here.