U.S. launches missile strike in Somalia

This is from wiredispatch.
Actions such as this hardly win friends for the U.S. It doesn't seem to care. This alienates the villagers even more from the U.S. There is no way that the U.S. can be assured that it will kill the targets and not innocent civilians. Even targetting a supposed terrorist and killing them without proper arrest trial conviction and sentencing is surely a complete travesty of justice. Known Al Qaeda terrorist my fanny. The U.S. paid for all sorts of known Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan. Anyone can earn a quick buck from the U.S. by telling intelligence officers what they want to hear. Some of the information is correct but much of it was not.


U.S. launches missile strike in Somalia


Sahra Abdi Ahmed
Reuters North American News Service

Mar 03, 2008 12:09 EST

KISMAYU, Somalia, March 3 (Reuters) - Two missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, in an attack the United States said was directed at "a known al Qaeda terrorist".



It was the fourth U.S. strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes Islamists are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.

"This attack was against a known al Qaeda terrorist," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in Washington.

"As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them," he said, declining to provide details of the operation.

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.

A militant Islamist organisation, the Mujahideen Youth Group, said in a posting on a Web site often used by al Qaeda and its supporters that the U.S. attack had "failed to hit leaders" of the group.

A senior U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether there were any casualties.

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 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 aeroplane 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.

Source: Reuters North American News Service

US preparing new air strikes in Somalia

Getting permission from the Puntland authorities would seem to grant recognition to them and take away from the authority of the central government recognised by the UN and in whose name Ethiopia invaded. In some cases it seems that the US does not even bother to clear operations with any governments. The US reserves the right to intervene anywhere in the world in the name of the battle against terrorism. Bombing villages is a good way to recruit for international terrorists. The seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers may be partly a result of US and allied interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to take advantage of dominant air power and high powered artillery forces in both countries often shell or bomb villages where insurgents are thought to be present.


US preparing air-strikes against Al-Qaeda in Somalia: official
Published: Tuesday June 12, 2007




US warplanes are overflying the northern Somali region of Puntland in preparation for air-strikes against suspected Al-Qaeda fugitives, more than a week after US warships shelled the area, officials said Tuesday.

The semi-autonomous regional government had authorised the overflights to pursue Al-Qaeda members believed to be hiding in the moutainous area, Puntland's security minister Ibrahim Artan Ismail told reporters.

"We know that American warplanes are overflying Puntland territory. This air surveillance is part of an agreement reached between Puntland authorities and the Americans," Islamil told a news conference in northern Somali town of Bosasso.

"The warplanes are looking for Al-Qaeda hideouts and when they get them, they will bomb them," he said, adding that the air operation covers areas where intelligence shows Al-Qaeda elements are hiding.

Residents told Somali media that US planes have been overfying the area.

Ismail asked residents of the inland mountanious areas and the hilly shoreline "not to worry about planes flying over them."

A US navy destroyer shelled the coast on June 2, killing at least 12 Islamist fighters, including foreigners, who were believed to be allied to extremist groups, Puntland officials said.

CNN reported that the destroyer was targeting a suspected Al-Qaeda operative believed to have been involved in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

Earlier this year, a US plane bombed positions in southern Somalia after Ethiopia-backed Somali government forces ousted a powerful Islamist movement from the country's southern and central regions. Local elders said more than 100 civilians were killed.

The targets were suspected Al-Qaeda operatives blamed both for the 1998 US embassy bombings and the 2002 suicide attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port of Mombasa that killed 15 people.

Among the so-called "high value" Al-Qaeda militants believed to be in Somalia are Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from the Comoros, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Sudanese national Abu Taha al-Sudani, an arms expert believed to be close to Osama bin Laden.

Others are Sheikh Dahir Aweys, the hardline cleric heading Somalia's Islamic Courts Union, and Adan Hashi Ayro, the commander of the Islamists' militia wing, the Shabaab.

A US force is based in Djibouti and patrols the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden as part of the US-led "war on terror".

US intelligence says Al-Qaeda has stepped up operations in Somalia, a nation of about 10 million people wracked by lawlessness since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Somalia's Puntland and neighbouring Somaliland regions have declared a form of autonomy and have enjoyed relative stability compared to Somalia proper, which has been wracked by lawlessness since 1991.



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