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The United States has around 700 soldiers and an unknown number of intelligence officers stationed in Somalia, where they are hunting down the Islamist group linked to al Qaeda al-Shabaab and training local forces.
The New York Times describes the assassinated CIA officer as experienced and with a background from Seal Team 6, the special military force that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
It is not known whether the officer was killed in an al-Shabaab attack or was killed during a US operation against the group. The CIA declines to comment on this.
135 CIA officers have died during missions in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years.
Dangerous
However, within the CIA, Somalia is considered a particularly dangerous area of operation and, no later than this week, a group of US-trained Somali soldiers were killed in an al-Shabaab attack. No Americans were killed in the attack, according to New York Times sources.
Al-Shabaab is considered one of the most dangerous branches of al-Qaeda and in 2006 it took control of much of Somalia.
The group was driven out of the capital Mogadishu when neighboring Ethiopia invaded, but it remains strong in southern Somalia, carrying out weekly terrorist attacks. Al-Shabaab has also carried out terrorist attacks in neighboring Kenya.
Drone attack
The United States has killed several leaders of Islamist groups over the years, often using drone strikes that have also claimed many civilian lives.
Within the CIA, there has long been uncertainty as to whether the risk associated with the US presence in Somalia has been too high, and outgoing President Donald Trump, according to the New York Times, ordered a near-total withdrawal from the country earlier. leaving the White House on January 20.
