[FartinMowler]

US attacks suspected militants in Somalia

09 January 2007 22:22

The United States has launched a fresh air strike in southern Somalia, targeting the same area attacked by a US military plane last night.

A Somali government spokesman has said that many people were killed in last night's attack and there are reports of as many as 27 people killed today.

A US aircraft carrier has been dispatched to the coast off Somalia to provide back up for the operation.
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The US is thought to be pursuing al-Qaeda operatives they believe to be hiding among the Islamist forces in the south of the country near the Kenyan border.

A Somali defence ministry spokesman said today's attack, by at least two helicopters, was aimed at destroying the command and control facility of the terrorists.

In last night's attack, a US AC-130 gunship hit at least two villages in a raid targeting suspected al-Qaeda operatives wanted in connection with the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

It was reported that those killed included a suspect wanted in connection with the bombings.

Somali officials said the US air strikes were launched after negotiations with the Ayr sub-clan - believed to be sheltering al-Qaeda operatives - failed to disclose the whereabouts of the wanted men.

The operation is the first overt US intervention in the Horn of Africa nation since the early 1990s.

Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has defended the US strikes, saying it was the 'right thing to do'.

The Islamists have vowed to wage a guerrilla war against the government and its Ethiopian backers.

Ethiopian and Somali troops last week routed Islamists from their final stronghold in the southern port town of Kismayo, forcing them to flee into scrublands along the border with Kenya.

Last June, the Union of Islamic Courts took control of the capital Mogadishu and imposed Sharia law after forcing US-backed warlords to withdraw from the city.

Following Islamist attempts to capture the exiled government base of Baidoa, Ethiopia openly entered the war, which proved the decisive factor in saving the government and pushing back the Islamist forces.

Ethiopia's intervention came with the tacit support of the US, which has long expressed the fear that Somalia might become a sanctuary for terrorist suspects.