United States forces hunting al-Qaeda suspects launched a fresh air strike on southern Somalia on Wednesday, a Somali government source said.
”As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force,” he told Reuters, giving no further details.
The latest attack followed mounting international criticism of a US strike in the area on Monday which Somali officials said had killed many people.
The attack on a south Somali village by an AC-130 plane firing automatic cannon was believed to have killed one of three al-Qaeda suspects wanted by Washington for twin bombings on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, a US intelligence official said.
In the US’s first direct military action in the country since the disastrous ”Black Hawk Down” operation of the early 1990s, the Pentagon said it had launched a series of strikes to kill or capture what officials called the ”Big Three” of al-Qaeda’s network in Africa.
A Pentagon official said the strikes were based on ”credible intelligence” that al-Qaeda leaders had fled Mogadishu to the southern part of the country after an offensive last month by Ethiopian forces.
Somali officials said at least 27 people were killed in the air strikes led by AC-130 gunships around Ras Kamboni. It was not clear whether any of the dead were al-Qaida operatives, although Pentagon officials confirmed that bodies had been seen on the ground.
The village of Haya near the Kenyan border was also strafed on Monday, Somali officials said, and there were further reports of operations on Tuesday.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday it had sent an aircraft carrier, the USS Eisenhower, to join three other US warships off the coast.
”It’s pretty clear that this administration will continue to go after al-Qaeda,” the White House spokesperson, Tony Snow, told a press conference. ”People who think they can establish a safe haven for al-Qaeda any place have to know that we are going to find them.”
The US tracked the Islamists from its Combined Task Force headquarters in Djibouti, which was established as a counter-terrorism base after the September 11 2001 attacks. The primary target of the air strikes was thought to be Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese explosives experts believed to head al-Qaeda operations in East Africa.
The attack was just the sort of operation sought by hardliners in the Bush administration, who had been pressing the military’s Special Operations Command for strikes against suspected al-Qaeda cells.
It was supported by the Somali government, whose shaky grip has been challenged by the rise of the Islamist Courts Movement. The US ”has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania”, the Somali President, Abdullahi Yusuf, told journalists in Mogadishu.
The attack was carried out under cover of Ethiopia’s military push into Somalia late last month, which is believed to have forced the leadership of the militant Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu.
Like Ethiopia, the Bush administration accuses the Islamist Courts Movement of harbouring and falling under the influence of al-Qaeda.
In addition to al-Sudan, the US believes two other suspects in the embassy bombings — Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comorian, and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan — have been hiding in Somalia.
All three were believed to have fled Mogadishu after Ethiopian troops entered the capital. Initially the US tried to capture the men with the help of warlords who ruled Somalia through the 1990s until 2005, offering bounties for their capture.
In recent years, the US has deepened its cooperation with the Ethiopian intelligence agencies to try to get on-the-ground information on Somalia. Analysts said the US believed the three al-Qaeda fugitives had sought refuge with Somali clans.
When Ethiopia sent thousands of troops in to back Somalia’s weak government against the Islamists towards the end of last year, the US gave its tacit approval. But analysts said it remained an enormous challenge to establish the whereabouts of suspected al-Qaeda cells, or to carry out an accurate strike given the limitations of the AC-130.
”It’s akin to the heart of darkness, just shooting into the jungle,” said Bob Baer, a former CIA agent. ”At the end of the day you are just making more enemies.”
Meanwhile, British officials warned of the prospect of al-Qaeda followers — or ”jihadists” as they called them — turning their attention to Ethiopia in response to its army’s role in overthrowing the Union of Islamic Courts and forcing its members to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
The officials said that these Islamic extremist fighters could now be planning to attack Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
The officials also said that other Islamic Court fighters could be regrouping in Kenya. Though the Somali border with Kenya was patrolled it was not sealed, a source said.
Amid the uncertainties about casualties, the British Foreign Office said it was unclear whether there had been any British people injured in the fighting following claims in the French newspaper Le Monde by the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, that Britons had been among the international terrorists killed injured or captured.
Somalia’s deputy prime minister, Hussein Mohammed Aideed, also spoke of British casualties, telling More4News: ”Those who died in the war with the ICU were British passport holders, US passport holders — they were the elite who went outside, indoctrinated differently and were told that the government is not a Muslim government, that it’s a government backed by infidels.”
Backstory
On August 7 1998 a truck bomb exploded outside the US embassy in Nairobi, killing 224 people. Minutes later, another car bomb detonated outside the US embassy in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam, killing 11. A dozen of the dead were Americans, the rest were African bystanders. Testimony at the trials of several men sentenced to life for their roles in the bombings suggested the team had used Somalia as a base to plan the attacks. Despite the arrests, the al-Qaeda cell in East Africa continued to operate. Shortly after 9/11, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who helped plan the embassy bombings, assembled a new team in Mogadishu. It included Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudan. On November 28 2002, Nabhan and Mohammed helped bomb an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, killing 15 people. An attempt to shoot down an Israel-bound airliner failed. Nabhan and Mohammed escaped to Somalia.
Most wanted al-Qaeda suspects
Abu Taha al-Sudan
A Sudanese national married to a Somali woman, al-Sudan is reported to be the head of al-Qaeda’s East Africa cell, and a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Operating between Somalia and the United Arab Emirates, he is accused of financing the 1998 US embassy bombings and the 2002 Mombasa hotel attack. Counter-terrorism officials believe he has lived on and off in Somalia for more than 10 years.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
With a $5-million bounty on his head, the 32-year-old Comorian is one of the world’s most wanted men. Described as an expert bomb-builder and a master of disguise, he has been on the run since 1998, when he helped organise the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. He was reportedly arrested by Kenyan police in 2002, but escaped the following day, and went on to play a leading role in the Mombasa hotel bombing.
Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan
A 38-year Kenyan, Nabhan is reported to have headed the Mombasa-based al-Qaeda team before the US embassy bombings, and handled the direct communication with Osama bin Laden. According to intelligence reports, he supervised the construction of the bombs used in the 2002 Mombasa hotel attack, and owned the Mitsubishi Pajero that detonated after being driven into the Paradise Hotel. He is also suspected of firing a surface-to-air missile at a plane bound for Israel on the same day. – Guardian Unlimited Â