|
US strikes on somalia strengthen islamists { December 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.garoweonline.com/stories/publish/article_6987.shtmlhttp://www.garoweonline.com/stories/publish/article_6987.shtml
Last Updated: Jan 9th, 2007 - 18:34:47
Somalia
U.S. airstrikes kill 27 civilians in Somalia
9 Jan 9, 2007, 18:32
The United States bombed a village near the Kenya-Somalia border and reportedly killed 27 civilians.
A Somalia official who spoke to Sky News from Mogadishu claimed helicopter gunships flattened entire villages in the area suspected to harbour an al Qaeda suspect and fleeing Islamic militia.
The attacks are likely to escalate tension and a fresh surge by Somali refugees, who have been barred from entering Kenya following the closure of the border.
On Tuesday, there was no independent confirmation of the killings though a Reuters report said scores were feared dead.
Initial reports indicated that an AC-130 plane rained gunfire on the desolate southern village of Hayo near the Kenyan border late on Monday.
Internal Security minister Mr John Michuki said Kenya had deployed all its security wings to the common border with war-torn country to maintain security.
Michuki said the Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, Kenya Air Force and Administration and regular police were all currently involved in border patrols.
Michuki, who was speaking to the Press at the Kenya Institute of Administration, added: "In some areas, we have deployed Kenya Wildlife Service rangers to ensure there is tight security".
Kenya closed its border with Somalia - which stretches more than 2,000km from North Eastern Province to the Indian Ocean in Lamu District - last week in an attempt to lock out fleeing fighters of the routed Islamic Courts Union.
Somali politicians interviewed in Nairobi claimed the US strikes came after Ethiopia sought Washington's assistance in routing militia which fled Mogadishu last week and believed to be hiding in remote villages near the Kenyan border.
The reports said the Ethiopian forces had encountered resistance in the Ras Kamboni area while pursuing the militia.
According to some eyewitness reports, several Ethiopian military trucks were spotted going back home while carrying injured soldiers.
Another official said it could prove hard to flush out the Islamists from their interior bases in the southern tip of the country near Kenya.
Hunt for Islamists extended to sea
Tuesday's air strike was the first known direct US military intervention in Somalia since a failed peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994
The US Navy confirmed it had moved an aircraft carrier, Eisenhower, to the Somali coast to beef up a naval cordon it had already put there as the Islamists sought refuge in the remote southern tip.
"They are, with other ships, making sure that terrorists are not able to use the sea as a means of transport," said Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet, based in the Gulf state of Bahrain.
US intelligence believes Mr Abu Talha al-Sudani, identified in grand jury testimony against Mr Osama bin Laden as an explosives expert from Sudan, is the leader of East Africa's al Qaeda cell and has been in and out of Somalia for over a decade.
"The Americans are saying an al Qaeda member heading operations in East Africa is among the Islamists there," a senior Somali source said. He did not know the man's name or whether he died.
US, Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence officials say some Islamists have provided shelter to a handful of al Qaeda members, including suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 Kikambala hotel bombing.
Besides al-Sudani, Washington has named Comoran Mr Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Mr Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan among the al Qaeda members in Somalia.
Strike targeted known terrorists
The Washington Post, quoting unnamed military sources, said al-Sudani was one target of the raid.
Ethiopian and Somali troops have chased al-Sudani since leading Islamist fighters near Buur Hakaba, close to the government Baidoa base, in the early days of a war that began around Christmas, Somali government officials told Reuters.
Hayo is in the southern tip of Somalia between Afmadow and Doble, areas where Ethiopian and Somali troops chased the Islamists' last remnants after ending their six-month rule of Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in a two-week offensive.
Though many have suspected an American hand in the Somali conflict, this attack is the first solid evidence of it and is in line with previous US attacks targeting al Qaeda members.
An unmanned Predator drone flown from the US Horn of Africa counter-terrorism base in Djibouti killed an al Qaeda suspect in Yemen in 2002, and the AC-130 was almost certainly flown from there by the elite Special Operations Command.
The AC-130 is a propeller-driven converted cargo plane derived from the AC-47 gunships flown in Vietnam that were known as "Puff the Magic Dragon". It has sophisticated sensors that allow it to pinpoint targets with heavy automatic cannon fire.
The lumbering, 29 metre long plane can fire 1,800 rounds a minute from a Gatling gun and has in its arsenal a 105mm howitzer - ordinarily a crew-fired ground artillery cannon that has to be towed by a truck.
The Islamists deny any al Qaeda links, saying the accusation has been invented to justify intervention in Somalia.
Born out of Sharia courts, the Islamists took Mogadishu and much of the south in June and threatened just weeks ago to overrun Baidoa, then the only town the government controlled.
Ethiopian troops with armour and air power, along with government forces, quickly pushed the Islamists from Baidoa, forced them out of their stronghold, Mogadishu, and caused them to scatter to Somalia's desolate southern edges.
Hundreds of Islamist fighters are now hiding in the bushland there, while Kenya's military is trying to seal its lengthy border to prevent them escaping.
Mindful of a disastrous intervention in the early 1990s - related in the book and film "Black Hawk Down" - Washington had until Monday not overtly involved its forces in the war.
US sponsored warlords but failed
But it did receive a setback when CIA was found in April to have paid despised Mogadishu warlords to help fight the Islamists on counter-terrorism grounds, only for them to lose the city to disciplined Islamist fighters in June.
The presence of troops from traditionally Christian Ethiopia has stirred both nationalist and religious fervour in mainly Muslim Somalia, with a series of protests and small attacks on Ethiopian troops in recent days.
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, who on Monday entered Mogadishu for the first time since his appointment in 2004, insisted the Ethiopians were not occupiers and would leave soon.
Ethiopia wants to withdraw his troops within a few weeks, but that may depend on the speed with which an African peacekeeping force can be mustered to replace them.
Source: The East African (Kenya)
|
|
