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« INEC confirms sack of pro-Ladoja legislators | Main | Nigeria bird flu death confirmed »

January 09, 2007

US launches air strike in Somalia

The US has carried out an air strike against Islamist fighters in a southern Somali village, which the US believes includes members of an al-Qaeda cell.

The targets were reported to have been tracked by aerial reconnaissance and then attacked by a US gunship launched from a US military base in Djibouti.

The US says Somali Islamists sheltered al-Qaeda operatives linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.

The Somali transitional government says many people were killed in the raid.

The air strikes took place a few days after the Union of Islamic Courts, which had taken control of much of central and southern Somalia during the past six months, was routed by soldiers from Ethiopia and Somalia's transitional government.

The US accused the Islamists of having links to al-Qaeda - charges they denied.

Target

There has been no official confirmation from the Pentagon that the air strike took place, but correspondents say a statement is expected within hours.


Location of militias and US Navy patrols
"So many dead people were lying in the area. We do not know who is who, but the raid was a success," interim government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told AFP news agency.

"The target was a small village called Badel where the terrorists were hiding. And the gunship did hit on the exact target," he said, adding that Somali and Ethiopian troops were nearby.

The bombing is the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since the 1990s when 18 US troops were killed in Mogadishu.

'Opportunistic attempt'

The attack was carried out by an Air Force AC-130, a heavily-armed gunship that has highly effective detection equipment and can work under the cover of darkness.

Reports suggest the US attack took place on Monday afternoon in an area known as Ras Kamboni on the southern tip of the country close to Kenya's border.

After fierce fighting, Ethiopian and Somali forces said on Monday that they were on the verge of capturing the area, one of the Islamist's last strongholds, where many fighters were dug in.

Many other Islamist fighters are in hiding across the country.

Al-Qaeda

Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf backed the US action.

"The US has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," he said in Mogadishu, a day after entering the city for the first time since the Islamists withdrew.

The BBC's Adam Mynott in Nairobi says the attack seemed to be an opportunistic attempt by the US to destroy an al-Qaeda cell that they had been tracking for some time.

The cell is believed to be behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam, in Tanzania.

More than 250 people died in the two attacks.

The US also holds the same group responsible for attacks on an Israeli aircraft and Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002, in which 15 people died.

Meanwhile, the US military said on Tuesday it had sent an aircraft carrier to join three other US warships conducting anti-terror operations off the country's coast.

Posted by Publisher at January 9, 2007 09:17 AM

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