NAIROBI, Kenya 03/03/08: American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia on Monday, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets.
Residents reached by telephone said the only casualties were three wounded civilians, three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, said the target was a “known Al Qaeda terrorist,” and another American military official said the attack was carried out with at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine. The official said the missiles are believed to have hit their targets but did not elaborate on the targets.
Witnesses on the ground, though, described the attack differently.
“I did not know from where they were launched, but what I know is that they hit a house in this town,” said Mohammed Amin Abdullahi Osman, a resident of Dhobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border.
Mr. Mohammed said two missiles crashed into the house around 3:30 a.m.
It was not the first time that American forces have fired missiles into Somalia in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives in the country. They did it at least three times last year.
Dhobley lies in the growing swath of southern Somalia that seems to be falling under the control of Somalia’s Islamist movement once again. The Islamists had risen to power in 2006 and brought a degree of law and order to Somalia for the first time since the central government collapsed in 1991.
But they were driven out of Somalia in late 2006 and early 2007 by a joint Ethiopian-American offensive. The Americans and Ethiopians suspected Somalia’s Islamists of harboring Al Qaeda terrorists, including men connected to the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Thousands of Ethiopian troops poured across the border, backed up by American air strikes and American intelligence. The Islamist movement then went underground.
But in the past several months, the Islamists seem to be making a comeback, taking over towns in southern Somalia, including Dhobley, and inflicting a steady stream of casualties on Ethiopian forces with suicide bombs and hit-and-run attacks. Efforts by foreign diplomats and the United Nations to broker a truce have failed, and concerns are rising that Somalia could be headed toward another war-induced famine like the one it suffered in the early 1990s.
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.
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WASHINGTON 03/3/08: At least two U.S. missiles have struck a home in southern Somalia, in what the U.S. military is calling an attack against "known terrorists."
U.S. military officials say Monday's attack in the town of Dobley was a
This US Navy handout photo released in 2003 shows the launch of a cruise missile in the waters off the coast of the Bahamas. The US military has fired at least one cruise missile into southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, targeting an Al-Qaeda leader, a US military official said.(AFP/US NAVY/File)
deliberate, precision airstrike on a building where the terrorist suspects were believed to be staying.
Witnesses say the missiles demolished a home and wounded several people. There are conflicting reports about whether anyone was killed.
Residents of Dobley say a senior Islamist cleric, Hassan Turki, was in town on Sunday to meet with other militants.
This is at least the third U.S. attack on targets in Somalia since the beginning of last year.
In January 2007, a U.S. AC-130 gunship fired on Islamist militants in southern Somalia. In June, a U.S. Navy destroyer shelled suspected al-Qaida targets in Somalia's Puntland region.
Witnesses report seeing an AC-130 above Dobley around the time of today's attack. The AC-130 is a gunship that can deliver precision airstrikes or saturate an area with heavy gunfire.
Somalia's government is fighting an Islamist insurgency that recently spread beyond the capital, Mogadishu. Islamist forces took control of Dobley last month.
The insurgency began last year after the government and allied Ethiopian troops ousted an Islamist movement that had seized control over much of Somalia.
The east African country has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: VOA
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US Missiles Strike Southern Somali Town
U.S. launched a military airstrike in Somalia to go after a group of terrorist suspects, defense officials said Monday.
"It was a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates," one U.S. military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record.
He gave few other details, except to say the targets were believed staying in building known to be used regularly by terrorist suspects.
In the strike early Monday, Somali police said three missiles hit a Somali town held by Islamic extremists, destroying a home and seriously injuring eight people.
The strike follows one last year in which the U.S. shelled suspected al- Qaida targets in Somalia, using gunfire from a U.S. Navy ship off the shore of the lawless East African nation.
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U.S. Launches Missile Strike in Somalia
The U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether any people were injured or killed.
Two U.S. missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, according to local officials, in an attack Washington said was directed at "known terrorists".
It was the fourth U.S. strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes local Islamist insurgents are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.
"We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists," a senior U.S. official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in Washington.
Residents of Dobley, a remote Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, said they believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.
Dobley district commissioner Ali Hussein Nur said six people were killed. A local politician, who had visited the scene and who asked not to be named, said only three were wounded.
The U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether there were any casualties. The official declined to give details on the type of weapon used.
The Somali politician said Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other leaders of a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu were meeting. The Islamists have been waging an insurgency against Somali government forces.
ASSESSING DAMAGE
"The town is very tense. People have started fleeing because they fear there might be more attacks," he said.
A man in Kismayu, who said the house that was hit belonged to him, told Reuters in Kismayu his daughter was among the wounded and four of his cows had also been killed in the attack.
"We do not know whether the missiles were fired by the American AC-130 plane which is still flying over the city. All we know is they dropped from the sky," Mohamed Nurie Salad said.
He said he was returning to Dobley to assess the damage, which he had been told about over the telephone.
On Jan. 8, 2007, a U.S. AC-130 gunship struck Islamists in southern Somalia in Washington's first overt military action there since pulling out of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission in 1994 after the "Black Hawk Down" incident.
That attack, and another with the same kind of airplane shortly thereafter, struck Islamists fleeing from Ethiopian and Somali troops who cornered them in southern Somalia during a two-week war to rout the militant movement.
On June 21, a U.S. Navy ship fired missiles at Islamist fighters and foreign jihadists hiding in the mountains in the northern Puntland region.
The United States accuses Somali Islamist insurgents of harbouring al Qaeda fugitives responsible for planning and executing the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
In Mogadishu, several civilians were killed by soldiers patrolling the Somali capital's main market on Monday.
"Four men were killed by stray bullets," Ali Mohamed, head of the Bakara market traders' committee, told Reuters. Witness Abdi Nur said he only saw two civilians dead.
In the southern town of Bur Hakaba, at least five people including the local police chief died in clashes between suspected Islamists and government forces, a resident said.
The Horn of Africa country has had no central government since a dictator was overthrown in 1991. An interim government formed in 2004 is struggling to assert its authority and is battling the Islamists in Mogadishu.
U.S. launched a military airstrike in Somalia to go after a group of terrorist suspects, defense officials said Monday.