Ethiopian helicopters, helped by United States intelligence, nearly hit Somali Islamist leaders after they fled their last stronghold, officials said on Thursday.
Kenyan police said, meanwhile, that a Kenyan military helicopter was ”extensively damaged” after it came under sustained ground fire while patrolling the border with Somalia, hours after the border was closed.
Ethiopian forces carried out the attack on suspected Islamist leaders near the Somali-Kenyan border on Tuesday.
A top Kenyan official, citing intelligence, said four Ethiopian helicopters, which struck positions 3km inside Kenya, ”nearly hit three off-road vehicles we strongly believed to be carrying the Islamist leaders”.
The trucks were inside Somali territory but some bombs from the attack fell on the Kenyan side of the border. The strikes in Kenya were a mistake, police said.
US naval forces, based in Djibouti, this week joined the hunt for the Islamist militants with suspected al-Qaeda ties. The Kenyan official said the three vehicles ”were being trailed by a US satellite and all indications are that the [Islamists] were inside.”
Four helicopters dropped six bombs at positions about 17km south of the Kenyan border post of Liboi on Tuesday, police confirmed.
In addition to three vehicles, an M16 rifle and a pamphlet were recovered from the trucks that had stalled inside Somalia territory, but no one was found in them, they said.
A top Somali government official confirmed the details of the incident, saying: ”I know of this.”
The fleeing Islamist leaders were reported to be in the Badade district in the Lower Jubba region of Somalia after giving up attempts to sneak into Kenya, the official said.
”We are still searching for them,” government spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari told the media.
The US was working closely with Somalia’s Horn of Africa neighbours ”to ensure that these individuals aren’t able to transit those borders”, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, without providing details of the US deployment.
Kenya has closed its border with Somalia to prevent an influx of weapons and fighters.
Kenyan police said a military helicopter came under fire in Hologho in the northern Ijara division along the border with Somalia on Wednesday afternoon.
There were no casualties but the chopper was forced to land after it sustained ”extensive damage” to the windscreen and propellor, officials said.
Police officials could not establish the source of the fire, but the pilot spotted armoured vehicles below.
Somali troops, backed by Ethiopian forces and tanks, routed the Islamists from Mogadishu and their other strongholds in the lawless African nation in a 10-day conflict that erupted December 20. The Islamist leadership has since vowed to wage a guerrilla war.
Somalia disintegrated after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. It was carved up among clan warlords, some of whom now back the transitional government. — AFP
