Guardian readers fund surgery for Somali boy injured in US drone strike

Marian Haji Abdi Guled sat in a rickshaw heading toward Kaafi hospital in Mogadishu on a Saturday morning in September, her mind divided between hope and dread. The day she had been waiting nearly a year to reach had finally arrived. Her son Abdiqadir Salah, now eight years old, was about to undergo surgery to remove shrapnel embedded deep in his back—shrapnel from a US drone strike that had torn through his village without warning.

Almost twelve months earlier, a missile had struck Jamaame, a village in southern Somalia. A Guardian investigation later established that the attack killed at least twelve civilians, eight of them children. Abdiqadir, then seven, had been outside when it happened. His body was pierced by fragments of metal. His two younger siblings were also wounded, though less severely. The shrapnel lodged in his back threatened to rob him of the ability to walk if left untouched. But surgery cost money the family did not have. For ten months, Guled had kept her injured children in Mogadishu, unable to afford treatment, unwilling to send them home unhealed, watching their medical bills accumulate while the family's savings drained away.

When the Guardian published its investigation into the strike, telling the story of Guled and others caught in the blast, something unexpected happened. Readers from around the world began to contribute. Within hours, enough money had been raised not only for Abdiqadir's operation but also for his rehabilitation, his siblings' treatment, and ongoing medical care. Guled, who had endured months of uncertainty and financial desperation, learned that strangers on the other side of the world had decided her son's life mattered enough to act. "I was so happy when I found out that Guardian readers raised the money needed for my son's surgery," she said. "I didn't know people like this existed."

On the morning of the operation, Guled waited outside the surgical suite. Hours passed. Other patients who had entered the operating room after Abdiqadir emerged before him. Her anxiety deepened. She found herself knocking on the operating room door, asking if her son was still alive, before other patients gently held her back. When Abdiqadir finally emerged, the surgeons delivered a mixed verdict. They had successfully removed two pieces of shrapnel, but the third fragment lay too close to his spinal cord. Attempting to extract it risked paralysis. They decided to leave it in place and monitor his condition over time.

When a Guardian reporter visited Abdiqadir weeks later, the boy appeared transformed—bright, energized, visibly at ease. "I have one piece of metal still in me, and if they touch it, I might become paralysed," he explained with the matter-of-factness of a child who has learned to live with his own fragility. "But I don't have any problem with the last piece of metal in my body, because I'm no longer in pain."

Yet the strike that injured Abdiqadir and killed twelve others raised questions the US military has not answered. How were targets selected? Why were children struck while standing openly in view? The investigation documented these gaps in accountability, but the US government offered no response. More troubling still, the airstrikes have not stopped. From December 2025 through July 2026, the US carried out at least three additional strikes in the area around Jamaame, according to research by New America, a security organization that tracks US military operations worldwide. Residents report that drones continue to circle overhead.

Guled cannot return to her village. The threat that wounded her children remains active in the sky above it. With the remaining funds from Guardian readers, she plans to move her family to Kismayo, a government-controlled port city that has not been targeted by drone strikes, where Abdiqadir can access further surgery if his condition changes. But the displacement is not an ending—it is a consequence that will reshape her family's life. She still wants the US government to acknowledge what happened to her children and to stop the bombing. "My son has been left scarred for life," she said. "I want the US government be held accountable for what they did to my family and for the US to stop bombing our community."