Ibtisam Posted January 9, 2007 US Somali air strikes 'kill many' The US is carrying out further air strikes in southern Somalia against Islamist fighters, who the US believes include 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. 'Boy killed' Witnesses told the BBC Somali service that the town of Afmadow was being bombed on Tuesday. Afmadow is 250km north of Ras Kamboni, close to the Kenyan border, which was hit by air strikes on Monday afternoon. "My 4-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale told the AP news agency from near Afmadow. AP says three other civilians have been killed but these reports have not been independently verified. There has been no official confirmation from the Pentagon that the air strikes took place, but correspondents say a statement is expected within hours. "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 about Monday's raids. "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. Another village, Hayo, was also targeted. The bombing is the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since 1994, the year after 18 US troops were killed in Mogadishu. 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. After fierce fighting, Ethiopian and Somali forces said on Monday that they were on the verge of capturing Ras Kamboni, one of the Islamist's last strongholds, where many fighters were dug in. Many other Islamist fighters are in hiding across the country. 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 accused of responsibility for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam, in Tanzania. 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. Sources: http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/3244/34/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6243459.stm Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
