U.S. planes attack Islamic militia targets in Somali; many deaths reported

By: MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN

A civilian, centre, walks past two Ethiopian soldiers. left, and Somali government forces on top of a truck outside Villa Somalia where the Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf stay's.(AP Photo/Mohamed Sheikh Nor)

MOGADISHU, January 9, 2007, Somalia - In the first overt U.S. military action in Somalia since the 1990s, American warplanes have blasted at least two Islamic militia targets near the Kenyan border, officials said Tuesday.

Many people were reported killed in the attacks, which U.S. officials said were on guerrillas they accused of sheltering suspect in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Helicopter gunships launched new attacks Tuesday near the scene of a U.S. air strike in the village of Hayi, although it was not clear if they were American or Ethiopian aircraft, and it was not known if there were any casualties.

Two helicopters "fired several rockets toward the road that leads to the Kenyan border," said Ali Seed Yusuf, a resident of the town of Afmadow in southern Somalia.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia's coast and launched intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the military said. Three other U.S. warships are conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast, it said.

U.S. warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia after Ethiopia, with Washington's blessing, invaded Dec. 24 in support of the western-backed interim government and drove the Islamic militia out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.

The White House would not confirm the attacks by the U.S. military, nor would the Pentagon.

But a U.S. government official said at least one AC-130 gunship was used. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity.

AC-130 gunships have elaborate sensors that can go after targets day or night. They are operated by the Special Operations Command and have been used heavily against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The air strikes occurred Monday evening in an area known as Ras Kamboni after members of the Islamic militia were seen hiding on remote Badmadow Island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border, Somali officials said. The island and a site near the village of Hayi, 250 kilometres to the north, were hit.

Witnesses said at least four civilians, including a small boy, were killed in the attack on Hayi. "My four-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale told The AP by telephone. "We also heard 14 massive explosions."

"We don't know how many people were killed in the attack but we understand there were a lot of casualties," said Abdirahman Dinari, a spokesman for Somalia's western-backed interim government. "Most were Islamic fighters."

The AC-130 is armed with 40 mm guns that fire 120 rounds per minute and a 105 mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon. The gunships were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops.

U.S. officials claimed the main target of the attacks was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 20 kilometres north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

Fazul, 32, joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and trained there with Osama bin Laden, according to the transcript of an FBI interrogation of a known associate. He arrived in Kenya in the mid-1990s, married a local woman, became a citizen and started teaching at a religious school near Lamu, about 100 kilometres south of Ras Kamboni.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa country of seven million people into chaos.

A UN peacekeeping force, including U.S. troops, arrived in 1992, but the experiment in nation-building ended the next year when fighters loyal to clan leader Mohamed Farah Aideed shot down a U.S. army Black Hawk helicopter and battled American troops, killing 18 American servicemen.

President Abdullahi Yusuf told journalists in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, that the U.S. "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies."

But others in the capital said the attacks would only increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country.

" U.S. involvement in the fighting in our country is completely wrong," said Sahro Ahmed, a 37-year-old civilian.

Already, many people in predominantly Muslim Somalia had resented the presence of troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population and has fought two brutal wars with Somalia, most recently in 1977.

Ethiopia forces had invaded Somalia to prevent an Islamic movement from ousting the weak interim government that was set up with UN assistance in 2004 amid ongoing political chaos in Somalia.

Ethiopian troops, tanks and warplanes took just 10 days to drive the Islamic group from the capital, Mogadishu, and other key towns.

Ethiopian and Somali troops had over the last days cornered the main Islamic force in Ras Kamboni, a town on Badmadow Island, with U.S. warships patrolling off shore and the Kenyan military guarding the border to watch for fleeing militants.

Washington has accused the Islamists of sheltering al-Qaida terrorists, an allegation denies by the militia, which has vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war in S omalia .

Source:AP