 | Follow-up article. Love the headline! |
MOGADISHU - Many people were killed in Somalia in a US air strike targeting Al Qaeda suspects among fleeing Islamist fighters, Somali officials said on Tuesday.
The US strike, part of a wide offensive also involving Ethiopian planes, was apparently aimed at an Al Qaeda cell said to include suspects in bombings of US embassies in east Africa and a hotel on the Kenyan coast.
| Aethiop and American planes working together -- at least in the same sky. How interesting. |
A Somali elder or traditional leader reported a second US air attack on Tuesday that killed up to 27 people but that could not be confirmed by other sources.
| Couldn't be confirmed due to a lack of live witnesses? |
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed one air attack on Sunday against the top Al Qaeda leadership in east Africa. He would not comment on whether the raid was successful but said it was based on “credible intelligence”. Spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to state categorically whether the US military had mounted other air strikes but indicated he had mentioned all US operations.
A senior Somali official said an AC-130 plane, a formidable weapon armed with rapid-firing cannons, rained gunfire on the remote village of Hayo but said the attack was late on Monday. “There are so many dead bodies and animals in the village,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
The Somali elder, from the southern town of Afmadow, said a second strike killed between 22 and 27 people in the same area. “US planes struck at Bankajirow this morning between 10 a.m. and noon (0700-0900 GMT),” the elder, who did not want to be identified, said by telephone.
A US official, who declined to be named, suggested any air operations on Tuesday were not carried out by American forces.
Both Hayo and Bankajirow are near the Kenyan border, where hundreds of Islamists ran away fled after their defeat by Ethiopian and transitional government forces. SomaliaÂ’s defence and information ministers told Reuters air strikes had taken place south of Hayo, near Ras Kamboni and Badmadow at SomaliaÂ’s southernmost tip. 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.
US intelligence believes Abu Talha Al-Sudani, named in grand jury testimony against Osama bin Laden as a Sudanese explosives expert, is al QaedaÂ’s east African boss and is hiding among the fleeing Islamist troops. |