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MOGADISHU - The United States military launched an air strike against suspected members of the al Qaeda terrorist network in southern Somalia, but it is unclear whether the operation was a success.
An AC-130 aerial gunship flew the mission in the last 24 hours, CNN said, citing a senior Pentagon official.
"Sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike," CBS News said.
"The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa," in Kenya and Tanzania, CBS said.
The suspected terrorists were chased out of Mogadishu by US-backed troops and were tracked by US unmanned aerial drones. The AC-130 gunship, operated by the US Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti for the attack, CBS said. It has machine guns capable of firing thousands of rounds per second.
NBC News said it was not clear whether the operation was a success and the US Defence Department spokesman, Todd Vician, was unable to confirm the reports.
However, the Somali Government said last night that US air raids hit right on target.
"We know that a US gunship raided targets of al Qaeda in southern Somalia sometime yesterday afternoon," Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
"The target was a small village called Badel where the terrorists were hiding. And the gunship did hit on the exact target," Dinari said, adding that Somali and Ethiopian troops were nearby.
"Absolutely a lot of people were killed. So many dead people were lying in the area, but we do not know who is who, but the raid was a success," Dinari said.
The attacks come more than a week after joint Ethiopian and Somali troops routed the Islamists, accused of ties to al Qaeda, from their final stronghold in the southern port town of Kismayo, forcing them to flee into scrublands along the border with Kenya.
The US rapidly deployed US warships off the coast of Somalia last week to track down fleeing Islamists. CNN reported a Pentagon official said the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower had moved within striking distance of Somalia, but its jets had not yet been put to use.
The Special Forces attack is the first military action in Somalia that Pentagon officials have acknowledged since American troops left after the Black Hawk Down episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu.
In the 1998 embassy attacks, al Qaeda militants, using materials smuggled through Somalia, blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring thousands. Attacks in 2002 on an Israeli airliner and Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa also came from Somalia, US officials said.
To counter the threat, the US military in 2002 set up a 1500-member counter-terrorism unit - the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa - in a former French foreign legion outpost in Djibouti, just north of Somalia. The US has also poured aid and military assistance into Ethiopia, where Djibouti-based US counter-terrorism advisers have joined Army patrols monitoring the country's border region near Somalia.
- AFP
