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US launches air raids in Somalia
09/01/2007 08:27 - (SA)
Baidoa - A United States military gunship launched air raids against hideouts of members of the al-Qaeda network in southern Somalia, hitting right on target, says the government.
A government spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari said: "We know that a US gunship raided targets of al-Qaeda in southern Somalia sometime yesterday afternoon", confirming reports by US television channels.
Dinari said: "The target was a small village called Badel, where the terrorists were hiding. And the gunship did hit on the exact target", adding that Somali and Ethiopian troops were nearby.
The spokesperson said there were casualties from the raids, which, according to reports, were carried out by a AC-130 gunship, operated by the US Special Operations Command, that flew from its base in Djibouti for the attack.
Raid 'was a success'
Dinari said: "Absolutely a lot of people were killed. So many dead people were lying in the area, but we do not know who is who, but the raid was a success."
But, US defence department spokesperson, Todd Vician, was unable to confirm the reports.
The attacks came more than a week after joint Ethiopian and Somali troops routed the Islamists, accused of ties to al-Qaeda, from their final stronghold in the southern port town of Kismayo, forcing them to flee into scrublands along the border with Kenya.
The targets of the raids included the senior al-Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al-Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
At the embassy attacks, al-Qaeda militants, using materials smuggled through Somalia, blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring thousands.
Suspected terrorists chased out of Mogadishu
US officials said attacks in 2002 on an Israeli airliner and Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa also came from Somalia.
It was reported that the suspected terrorists were chased out of the lawless Somali capital, Mogadishu, on December 28 by American-backed troops and were tracked by US unmanned aerial drones.
Washington said the Islamists - leaders of the Islamic Courts movement that had gained control of much of Somalia in the final months of last year - included prominent operatives of the al-Qaeda organisation.
To counter the al-Qaeda threat, the US military in 2002 set up a 1 500-member counter-terrorism unit - the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa - in a former French foreign legion outpost in Djibouti, just north of Somalia.
The US had also poured aid and military assistance into Christian-dominated Ethiopia, where Djibouti-based US counter-terrorism advisers had routinely joined army patrols monitoring the country's border region near Somalia.
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