SOMALIA / FILE: A U.S. warplane hunting al Qaeda suspects killed many people in south Somalia

Record ID: 355789

  • Title: SOMALIA / FILE: A U.S. warplane hunting al Qaeda suspects killed many people in south Somalia
  • Date: 9th January 2007
  • Summary: (W3) ADRIATIC SEA (FILE - 1998) (REUTERS) UNITED STATES AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS EISENHOWER FLIGHT DECK F18 AIRCRAFT TAKING OFF FROM USS EISENHOWER USS EISENHOWER TOWER USS EISENHOWER RADAR
  • Embargoed: 24th January 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA8WVE31U1TAV2RQLUCDGWGA6KF
  • Story Text: A U.S. warplane hunting al Qaeda suspects killed many people in south Somalia as other air strikes also hit the remote region where fugitive Islamist fighters are hiding, officials said on Tuesday (January 9).
    In the first known direct U.S. military intervention in Somalia since a failed peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994, an AC-130 plane rained gunfire on the desolate village of Hayo late on Monday (January 8), a senior government official said.
    Somalia's defence and information ministers told Reuters other airstrikes took place south of Hayo, near Ras Kamboni and Badmadow at Somalia's southernmost tip near the Kenyan border.
    Neither would say if the United States or Ethiopia, which has jets and helicopters in the area, carried them out, or precisely when they occurred.
    Hundreds of Islamists have sought refuge in southern Somalia's jungle and bush, where Ethiopian and Somali troops have chased them in a swift offensive that ran them out of their strongholds, including Mogadishu, before the New Year.
    There was no independent confirmation of the locations of the attacks, nor casualty figures.
    Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf told reporters in Mogadishu, where he went on Monday for the first time since his 2004 election, that he could not confirm the strikes, but said the United States should hunt al Qaeda wherever they are.
    "I think they are right to strike, because some of those who fled are the ones who bombed the embassy in Nairobi and also in Tanzania and a Hotel in Mombasa. They are wanted and they are known as terrorists. They destroyed embassies and killed people," said Abdullahi Yusuf referring to reported al Qaeda attacks.
    U.S. intelligence believes Abu Talha al-Sudani, identified in grand jury testimony against Osama bin Laden as an explosives expert from Sudan, is the leader of east Africa's al Qaeda cell and has been in and out of Somalia for over a decade.
    Besides al-Sudani, Washington has named Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan among the al Qaeda members in Somalia.
    The president added that pardon for the al Qaeda fighters was out of the question.
    "If we forgive them we have to issue a government order, but to the Islamic courts leaders, no one offers forgiveness because they are criminals. You know what they did and as for dialogue, there are no Islamic courts or institutions," Abdullahi Yusuf said.
    The U.S. Navy confirmed it had moved the aircraft carrier Eisenhower to the Somali coast -- Africa's longest -- to beef up a naval cordon it had already put there as the Islamists sought refuge in the remote southern tip.
    An unmanned Predator drone flown from the U.S. Horn of Africa counter-terrorism base in Djibouti killed an al Qaeda suspect in Yemen in 2002, and the AC-130 was almost certainly flown from there by the elite Special Operations Command.
    Residents of the Somali capital of Mogadishu had mixed reactions to the news of the U.S. airstrike.
    "I see that the warplanes that were used in the bombing were chasing terrorists, and we Somalis have to support the efforts of the TFG (Transitional Federal Government), " said Abdullahi Ahmed Ali, a Mogadishu resident.
    At a cafeteria in the capital residents were gathered to share news of the several weeks fighting. Some appealed for an end to the violence.
    "I am very, very sorry about these American airstrikes, but we will take revenge Inshallah, all our people must to talk each other and not to foreigners. However we do not accept these airstikes on our land by the Americans and the Ethiopians," said Abdulahi Mohamoud Mohammed.
    U.S., Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence officials say some Islamists provided shelter to a handful of al Qaeda members, including the suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and 2002 hotel bombing on the Kenyan coast.
    Though many have suspected an American hand in the Somali conflict, this attack is the first solid evidence of it and is in line with previous U.S. attacks targeting al Qaeda members.
    The Islamists deny any al Qaeda links, saying it was a charge invented to justify intervention in Somalia.
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