A United States air strike in Somalia missed its main target of three top al-Qaeda suspects but killed up to 10 of their allies, a senior American official said on Thursday. A US warplane on Monday attacked a village in southern Somalia in an attempt to destroy an al-Qaeda cell accused of bombing two US embassies and an Israeli-owned hotel in East Africa.
The strike killed eight to 10 ”terrorist targets” but the US was still in pursuit of the three most wanted suspects, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The first overt US military intervention in Somalia for more than a decade targeted Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Sudanese Abu Talha al-Sudani and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.
The US official, who is based in the region, rejected Somali reports that dozens of civilians were killed, saying only militants died.
”All I can say … is that it was a targeted strike at al-Qaeda-connected or -affiliated people,” he said. ”We and the Ethiopians and everyone else want to interdict terrorists.”
US ally Ethiopia, which sent its military into Somalia before Christmas to oust Islamists who threatened to overrun the country’s interim government, continued air attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday in pursuit of fleeing fighters.
The Pentagon denied it had mounted any strikes after Monday.
Kenyan authorities have arrested the wives and three children of two of the senior al-Qaeda suspects, a Kenyan counter-terrorism source told the media on Thursday.
The suspects are wanted for 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 hotel blast on the Kenyan coast.
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 today [Thursday] in a police chopper for questioning,” the source said.
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
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Wednesday the US strike hit its target. But a Somali security source 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.
In the Somali government’s interim capital, Baidoa, its only home until Ethiopian and Somali 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 required 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