| Home | Politics | Human Rights | Water | Economy | Education | Sci & Tech | Culture | Sport |
09 January 2007
The US has carried out at least two air strikes in southern Somalia targeting
Islamist fighters, who the US believes include members of an al-Qaeda cell.
The militias were reported to have been tracked by aerial reconnaissance and
then attacked by a US gunship launched from a US military base in Djibouti.
The US says Somali Islamists sheltered al-Qaeda operatives linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.
The Somali transitional government says many people were killed in the raid.
The air strikes are taking place just a few days after the Union of Islamic Courts, which had taken control of much of central and southern Somalia during the past six months, was routed by soldiers from Ethiopia and Somalia's transitional government.
The US accuses the Islamists of having links to al-Qaeda - charges they deny.
'Boy killed'
Witnesses told the BBC Somali service that areas near the town of Afmadow were being bombed on Tuesday.
They report hearing heavy firing in a number of areas and have seen military helicopters flying overhead.
On Monday, the nearby village of Hayo was bombed, with unconfirmed reports
of four civilians killed.
"My 4-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale
told the BBC from the area.
Afmadow is 250km north of Ras Kamboni, close to the Kenyan border, where Islamist fighters have fled and which Ethiopian and Somali government forces said on Monday they were on the verge of capturing.
The island of Badmado off Ras Kamboni was also hit by air strikes on Monday afternoon.
There has been no official confirmation from the Pentagon that the air strikes took place, but correspondents say a statement is expected within hours.
"So many dead people were lying in the area. We do not know who is who, but the raid was a success," interim government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told AFP news agency about Monday's raids.
The bombing is the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since 1994, the year after 18 US troops were killed in Mogadishu.
The attack was carried out by an Air Force AC-130, a heavily-armed gunship that has highly effective detection equipment and can work under the cover of darkness.
Credible reports suggest that the Ethiopian air force has set up a base in Kismayo, with two MiG fighters and four helicopter gunships, which may be taking part in the raids.
Al-Qaeda
Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf backed the US action.
"The US has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania," he said in Mogadishu, a day after entering the
city for the first time since the Islamists withdrew.
More than 250 people died in the 1998 attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,
for which al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility.
The US also holds the same cell responsible for attacks on an Israeli aircraft and Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002, in which 15 people died.
In other developments:
BBC NEWS