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By Josh Meyer - and Edmund Sanders
11 January 2007
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Tuesday that it would continue its aggressive hunt for suspected terrorists in Somalia, amid unconfirmed reports that a U.S. airstrike or follow-up attacks killed an al-Qaeda leader wanted in connection with several bombings in East Africa.
Two U.S. counterterrorism officials said Tuesday evening that analysts were assessing reports from Somalia that Abu Talha al-Sudani, one of three operatives sought in connection with bombings of a Kenya hotel in 2002 and strikes against Israeli airliners, had been killed.
Abdirizak Hassan, chief of staff for President Abdullahi Yusuf, said suspected al-Qaeda cell leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and three leaders of the fleeing Islamic Courts Union government had been killed.
The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that an Air Force AC-130 gunship fired Sunday at what U.S. officials called a terrorist hideout in a forested area near the southern border with Kenya, after ``credible intelligence'' indicated that senior al-Qaeda leaders were there.
``As we pursue the war on terror we will seek out, attempt to identify, locate, capture and if necessary kill terrorists and to thwart their activities,'' Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said. ``We are also going after those who harbor and provide safe haven for terrorists and their activities.''
But Whitman would not say whether al-Sudani Mohammed, and a third suspect, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, were the targets of the airstrike, nor whether any were killed or injured.
If a top leader indeed had been killed, the U.S. officials said, it would mark a significant victory in a war on terrorism that has not netted a high-value al-Qaeda suspect since the targeted killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq last summer. Authorities described al-Sudani as a senior al-Qaeda operative in East Africa and close associate of cell leader Mohammed, who also is wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
The reports differed over whether al-Sudani was killed by the air attack or in subsequent sweeps by the Ethiopian military, the intelligence officials said.
The U.S. officials discounted reports that Mohammed had been killed.
The slain Islamic courts officials included former chief of security of Mogadishu, Sheik Abduallahi Moalim Ali, as well as Abdirahman Janaqow, deputy chairman of Somalia's Islamic Courts, according to Hassan. He did not identify the third slain official. He added that Ethiopian troops had retrieved bodies from the strike area.
Analysts said they believed that the U.S. actions in Somalia would be limited and short-lived, and would not include ground forces.
Source: www.registerguard.com