'Many dead' in US strike at al-Qaeda in Somalia

Mogadishu, Jan 10: Many people were killed in Somalia in a USair strike targeting al Qaeda suspects among fleeing Islamist fighters,Somali officials said today.

The US strike, part of a wide offensive also involving Ethiopianplanes, was apparently aimed at an al Qaeda cell said to includesuspects in bombings of US embassies in east Africa and a hotel on theKenyan coast.

A Somali elder or traditional leader reported a second US airattack today that killed up to 27 people but that could not beconfirmed by other sources.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed one air attack on Sunday againstthe top al Qaeda leadership in east Africa. He would not comment onwhether the raid was successful but said it was based on ''credibleintelligence''.

Spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to state categorically whetherthe US military had mounted other air strikes but indicated he hadmentioned all US operations.

The attack was Washington's first overt military intervention inSomalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994.

A senior Somali official said an AC-130 plane, a formidable weaponarmed with rapid-firing cannons, rained gunfire on the remote villageof Hayo but said the attack was late yesterday.

''There are so many dead bodies and animals in the village,'' the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

The Somali elder, from the southern town of Afmadow, said a second strike killed between 22 and 27 people in the same area.

''US planes struck at Bankajirow this morning between 10 am andnoon (1230 IST - 1430 IST),'' the elder, who did not want to beidentified, said by telephone.

A US official, who declined to be named, suggested any air operations today were not carried out by American forces.

Both Hayo and Bankajirow are near the Kenyan border, wherehundreds of Islamists fled after their defeat by Ethiopian andtransitional government forces in a lightning war in late December thatended six months of Islamic rule.

Somalia's defence and information ministers told Reuters airstrikes had taken place south of Hayo, near Ras Kamboni and Badmadow atSomalia's southernmost tip.

Neither would say if the United States or Ethiopia, which has jetsand helicopters in the area, carried them out, or precisely when theyoccurred.

US intelligence believes Abu Talha al-Sudani, named in grand jurytestimony against Osama bin Laden as a Sudanese explosives expert, isal Qaeda's east African boss and is hiding among the fleeing Islamisttroops.

Before Ethiopian intervention, the Islamists seemed set to drive theweak interim government out of its only base in the small southern townof Baidoa. In another sign of a more muscular US action, the US Navysaid it had moved the aircraft carrier Eisenhower to the Somali coastto beef up a naval cordon to cut off any Islamist escape via the IndianOcean. Kenya has sealed its border.

Bomb Suspects US

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

Besides al-Sudani, Washington has named Comorian Fazul AbdullahMohammed, who has a 5 million dollar reward for his capture, and KenyanSaleh Ali Saleh Nabhan among those in Somalia.

As news of the air attacks emerged, rocket-propelled grenades werefired at a building in Mogadishu housing Ethiopian and Somaligovernment troops, where at least one person died in an attack over theweekend.

A Reuters reporter heard the RPGs followed by a 10 minute exchangeof fire with automatic weapons. A car was burning outside the compound.A government source said one Somali soldier was killed and one woundedin the firefight.

The European Union, which has frequently differed with Washington over Somalia, criticised the US air raid.

''Any incident of this kind is not helpful in the long term,'' aspokesman for the European Commission said, adding that only apolitical solution would bring peace.

Somali Information Minister Ali Ahmed Jama ''Jangali'' said: ''TheIslamists are hiding in the thick jungle and it's only air strikes thateliminate them from there. The strikes ... will continue until noterrorist survives.'' The US embassy in Nairobi today renewed a warningto Americans in the region of the danger of terrorist attacks, sayingdefeat in the Somalia war could push al-Qaeda agents into other partsof the region.

The presence of Ethiopians in Somalia has uncorked an ancientenmity between the neighbours, and a handful of protests and smallattacks have broken out in Mogadishu.

Ethiopian troops are helping the government tame the gun-filledcountry while an African peacekeeping force is assembled. It is the14th attempt to impose order since the 1991 ouster of the last nationalpresident sparked anarchy.

After the disastrous 1992-94 US mission, chronicled in the film''Black Hawk Down,'' Washington had kept clear of intervention inSomalia for a decade. But the CIA was widely reported to have beenbankrolling warlords who controlled Mogadishu before being ousted bythe Islamists last June.

Reuters
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