Kenyan police on Thursday interrogated two al-Qaeda suspects’ wives caught fleeing Somalia, as mystery remained over whether their husbands survived a United States air strike.
The US on Monday hit a village in southern Somalia in an attempt to take out an al-Qaeda cell accused of bombing two US embassies and an Israeli-owned hotel.
US ally Ethiopia continued air attacks in Somalia on Wednesday and Tuesday in pursuit of fleeing Islamist fighters, but the Pentagon denied it had mounted more strikes.
The success of the attacks remains unclear, although Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said eight ”terrorists” were killed in the US strike.
A Kenyan counter-terrorism source said the wives and three children of two al-Qaeda suspects, wanted for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 hotel blast on the Kenyan coast, had been arrested.
Unconfirmed reports say one of three al-Qaeda suspects — Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Sudanese Abu Talha al-Sudani and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan — was killed. But it was not known which one.
Mohammed and Nabhan’s wives and children were caught trying to cross into Kenya from Ras Kamboni, on Somalia’s southern tip, long thought by Western and East African intelligence agencies to be the site of a militant training camp.
”They were arrested on Monday at Kiunga. They headed for Nairobi in a police chopper for questioning,” the counter-terrorism source told Reuters.
Kenyan police made no official comment.
The US government is offering a $5-million reward for the capture of Mohammed, indicted in a federal court for his alleged role in the bombings.
Four other male suspects caught in another attempt to cross the border were also being driven to Nairobi for questioning, the source said.
Confusion over attacks
Although Ethiopia’s Meles said on Wednesday the US strike hit its target, Washington has made no official comment on the success of the raid.
A Somali security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, cast doubt that any al-Qaeda members, who had hidden in Somalia for years with the help of hard-line Islamists, were killed.
”I think the air strikes have weakened the Islamists. There have been no air strikes today [Thursday]. I don’t think the Americans and Ethiopians have killed any wanted terrorists. Most of the dead there are civilians and livestock,” the source said.
The US attack on Monday — its first overt military intervention in Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission ended in 1994 — was criticised by the United Nations, many European countries and the Arab League.
Meles said DNA testing on the remains of eight people killed when an American AC-130 plane unleashed barrages of automatic cannon fire on the southern Somali village would establish whether they were al-Qaeda fugitives.
In the Somali government’s interim capital, Baidoa, its only home until Ethiopian and Somali government troops last month defeated Islamists who had controlled southern Somalia, Parliament debated a plan to impose martial law.
Pro-government MPs said they had the votes, but others said the move would be challenged in debate.
”There is need for an emergency law. But it is not acceptable for the federal institutions and parliamentary powers to be hijacked by a clique or for the executive to take overall power,” lawmaker Mohamed Sheikh Jama told Reuters.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said in late December, hours before the government officially entered the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time in its two-year existence, that three months of martial law would be necessary to impose order on the failed state.
Gedi’s government is the 14th attempt to establish central rule on the Horn of Africa nation since 1991, when the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre turned the country into a synonym for anarchy, death and guns. — Reuters