US raid may have hit top Somali militant: Pentagon

Washington, Jan 18: The US air strike in Somalia last week may have wounded or killed a senior militia leader who the United States says protected three al Qaeda suspects wanted by Washington, a senior Pentagon official said.

Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for African affairs, said she believed the raid killed eight ''fighters'' for Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, head of an Islamist militia who may have been seriously wounded or even killed.

''Ayro had been instrumental in sheltering the three al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists that we are interesting in bringing to justice for the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania,'' said Whelan in answer to a question at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

''He (Ayro) was important to us as without his help, the top three, could not have stayed in Somalia.'' The three are suspected of bombing the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and of a 2002 hotel blast on the Kenyan coast.

The attack last Monday in a village in southern Somalia was the first overt US military action in Somalia for more than a decade. It targeted Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Sudanese Abu Talha al-Sudani and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who were believed to be hiding among the fleeing Islamists.

Whelan said the United States was still searching for the three al Qaeda suspects and trying to confirm whether Afghanistan-trained Ayro was killed.

''We think we might have gotten him,'' she said, ''We know that he was seriously wounded but do not know if he has expired,'' she added. Whelan told Reuters that the eight killed were all young men, ''armed to the teeth, clearly a security detachment.'' She rejected Somali reports that dozens of civilians were killed.

''There were no civilians,'' she said.

REUTERS