US says Somalia must not become terror haven

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) The United States said today it was very concerned over the presence of al Qaeda ''terrorists'' in Somalia, where local officials say the US launched air strikes killing more than 20 people this week.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who declined to provide details of attacks in southern Somalia, said the United States had made clear it did not want the lawless Horn of Africa country to become a safe haven for terrorists.

''Very clearly, the US government has had a concern that there are terrorists and al Qaeda affiliated terrorists that were in Somalia. We have a great interest in seeing that those individuals not be able to flee to other locations,'' McCormack told reporters.

President George W Bush has frequently indicated --especially since the September 11 attacks blamed on al Qaeda --that the United States has the right to hit terrorist targets in other countries.

McCormack referred any questions over US military action to the Pentagon, which later confirmed that the United States had conducted a strike in Somalia on Sunday targeting al Qaeda leadership.

It was Washington's first overt military intervention in Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994.

A senior Somali government official said an AC-130 plane fired on the remote village of Hayo late yesterday. Somali officials said ''many'' people were killed by the US air strike on Monday but McCormack had no details.

''Any military action takes every step it possibly can to ... minimize the possibility of any loss of innocent life,'' said McCormack.

US warplanes also killed between 22 and 27 people in another strike in Hayo today in a hunt for al Qaeda operatives, an elder from a neighboring town said.

Hundreds of Islamists have sought refuge in southern Somalia's bush, where Ethiopian and Somali government troops chased them after their defeat in a war before the New Year that ended six months of Islamic rule.

US, Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence officials say the Islamists hid a handful of al Qaeda members, including suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 hotel bombing on the Kenyan coast.

REUTERS BDP BST2204