US airstrikes target suspected al-Qaeda operations in Somalia
RAW STORY
Published:
Monday January 8, 2007
 Multiple networks reported that US airstrikes targeted suspected al-Qaeda operations in southern Somalia, but as of late Monday evening, there is no official word that the operation was launched or if it was successful.
"Pentagon officials are pretending that they don't know anything about it," said a commentator on MSNBC's broadcast initially, when the reports first came out around 7 PM EST, before the cable news network found an unnamed official willing to confirm it.
According to an article in Tuesday's Washington Post, "U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure...although the information was still scanty."
"'You had some figures on the move in a relatively unpopulated part of the country,' said one source confirming the attack, who, like several others, would discuss the operation only on the condition of anonymity," Karen DeYoung wrote for the Post.
The source told the paper, "It was a confluence of information and circumstances."
After the Post article hit the Internet, an update was added hours later, with word from the chief of staff for Somalia Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi that the strike took place, and was apparently successful.
"Hassan said he heard from American officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed had been killed, although U.S. officials said he had not been in their immediate sights," the Post reported. "'Among the targets was Fazul,' he said, 'and we understand that Fazul is no more.'"
"A senior Pentagon official confirmed for NBC News Monday that a U.S. helicopter gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al-Qaida operatives in southern Somalia," MSNBC later reported at its web site. "It was not immediately known whether the mission was successful."
Operatives in Somalia – who are believed to be responsible for 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, along with 2002 attacks on Israeli tourists, also in Kenya – were targeted in the strikes, MSNBC News reported.
Among those targeted was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. According to the FBI's web site, where he's listed as one of the most wanted fugitives, "Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was indicted in the Southern District of New York, for his alleged involvement in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998."
There is a $5 million reward for information leading directly to the apprehension or conviction for the fugitive terrorist, who "likes to wear baseball caps and tends to dress casually and is very good with computers," according to the FBI.
A senior Pentagon official told CNN that the aerial gunship employed, the AC-130, had flown "its mission within the last 24 hours."
"Additionally, the official said, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has moved within striking distance of Somalia, but its jets have not been put to use," CNN reports.
CBS News reported that "bodies were seen on the ground" at the site of the airstrikes.
"The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no confirmation of the identities," according to a AP/CBS report.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported that the AC-130 "flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States."
Excerpts from MSNBC's online report:
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The U.S. Air Force helicopter, operated by the Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia, where the al-Qaida suspects were believed to have fled from the capital, Mogadishu, CBS News reported.
U.S. officials say that the United States received assurances from both the Ethiopian and Somalian governments in the last two weeks that, should they obtain intelligence concerning the whereabouts of the al-Qaida operatives, they would pass it on to the United States.
FULL MSNBC ARTICLE HERE
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Excerpts from the AP/CBS report:
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Somali officials said the Islamic movement's main force is bottled up at Ras Kamboni, the southernmost tip of the country, cut off from escape at sea by patrolling U.S. warships and across the Kenyan border by the Kenyan military.
In Mogadishu, Somalia's president made his first visit to the capital since taking office in 2004. During the unannounced visit, President Abdullahi Yusuf was expected to meet with traditional Somali elders and stay at the former presidential palace that has been occupied by warlords for 15 years, government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
U.S. officials warned after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that extremists with ties to al Qaeda operated a training camp at Ras Kamboni and that al Qaeda members are believed to have visited it.
FULL ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
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Excerpts from Washington Post article:
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One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 -- the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader.
More recently, Sudani was identified by U.S. intelligence as a close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, head of a Mogadishu-based network that operated in support of al-Qaeda in Somalia. Dourad is one of 14 "high-value" prisoners transferred last September from CIA "black sites" to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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FULL POST ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
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