Official says Western jihadists killed in Somalia

BOSSASSO, Somalia, June 3 (Reuters) Six Islamist fighters, including foreigners from Western nations, were killed in US air strikes and battles with local forces in northern Somalia this weekend, a regional official said today.

''Yesterday we killed six terrorists from America, Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen,'' said Mohamed Ali Yusuf, finance minister in the semi-autonomous Puntland administration.

''We came out victors and the fighting is over. Five Puntland troops were wounded,'' he told a news conference in Bossasso.

He gave no other details. Local forces on trucks fitted with heavy guns have blocked roads leading up to the mountain hideouts where American missiles crashed down on Friday. CNN said the attacks were aimed at an al Qaeda suspect.

A Somali jihadist group calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement had earlier said it suffered no casualties in what it called ''random'' US air strikes and said it killed 11 soldiers.

''American planes carried out random attacks without causing any losses among the mujahideen, praise to God,'' the group said in a Web posting. The statement could not immediately be verified but was on a site used by al Qaeda and other Islamists.

Speaking in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to comment on the strikes in rugged northern Somalia, saying it was possibly an operation still in progress.

CNN quoted unnamed sources as saying the attacks were the second in six months aimed at a suspect in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 240 people.

ISLAMISTS TARGETED Puntland residents said violence broke out after a group of Islamists, including foreign fighters, landed by boat in the area on Wednesday before exchanging fire with local police.

The United States also launched air strikes in southern Somalia in January aimed at three top al Qaeda suspects but killed their allies instead, US officials have said.

They were believed to be in a group of Islamists who fled the capital Mogadishu in January after being routed by the Somali interim government and its Ethiopian military allies.

Washington says six al Qaeda operatives or associates are in Somalia, including alleged embassy bomber Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, and Abu Talha al-Sudani, accused of orchestrating the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 15.

Others include Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, hardline leader of the ousted Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC), and Adan Hashi Ayro, head of the SICC's feared military wing, the Shabaab.

SICC remnants have been blamed for a wave of guerrilla attacks mostly targeting Ethiopian troops in the capital.

In the latest, residents said one person was killed and two were wounded today when Ethiopian soldiers opened fire after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb.

''A remote-controlled landmine went off as the Ethiopian military vehicles passed,'' said one witness, who gave his name as Mustafa. ''After the blast, the Ethiopians began shooting.'' REUTERS LPB RK1710