U.S. Launches Targeted Assassination Air Strikes in Somalia, Many Reported Killed

MOGADISHU — Many Somalis, including a four-year-old child, have been killed in American air strikes on two villages in southern Somalia, the first known direct US intervention in the war that began last month.

"We know that a US gunship raided targets of Al-Qaeda in the southern village of Badel sometime yesterday afternoon," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, January9 .

"The target was a small village called Badel where the terrorists were hiding. And the gunship did hit on the exact target," he said.

"A lot of people were killed," the government spokesman confirmed, though unable to elaborate on the victims' identities.

A government source told Reuters that an AC- 130plane rained gunfire down on Badel village.

It would almost certainly have been flown by the elite Special Operations Command from the US Horn of Africa counter-terrorism base in Djibouti.

The US set up a taskforce in Djibouti in 2002 to serve as a major hub for US counter-terrorism training and operations.

Members of the1 ,800-member Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa have also trained with troops in Ethiopia, and US ships patrol the nearby Gulf of Aden, according to Pentagon documents.

Child Killed

Earlier, eyewitnesses told the Associated Press that a US gunship hit targets near Afmadow,155 miles north of Ras Kamboni, killing at least one childe.

"My4 -year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale told the AP by telephone from the outskirts of Afmadow.

The American operation reportedly targeted an alleged Al-Qaeda member heading operations in east Africa.

The US raid was the first overt US military intervention in the ongoing war in Somalia.

Western analysts insist that the US allowed regional ally Ethiopia to launch war against the SICS instead of any direct US intervention in the Somali conflict.

Last week, the Kenyan government announced that Ethiopian aircraft bombed three off-road vehicles near the borders strongly believed to have been carrying SICS leaders after they have been trailed by a US satellite.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has confirmed joining hands with Ethiopia and the interim Somalia government in hunting down fleeing SICS leaders.

"We of course have a presence off the coast of Somalia and Horn of Africa to make sure there are no escape routes by sea where these individuals could flee."

The US claims the Supreme Islamic Courts of Somalia (SICS), routed of Mogadishu and other strongholds across Somalia by Ethiopian troops, had provided shelter to a handful of Al-Qaeda members.

It also insists that suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania used Somalia as a base.

The SICS has repeatedly denied Al-Qaeda links, saying this charge is an invention to justify foreign intervention in Somalia.

"Right Thing"

Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was quick to defend the US raid, calling it the "the right thing to do."

"The Americans had a right to carry out the air strikes on some Al-Qaeda members," Yusuf told reporters at a news conference.

"Those who carried out attacks on the US embassy in Kenya and Tanzania were there, so it was the right thing and the right time to carry out such strikes," he argued.

Arriving for his first ever visit to the capital Mogadishu since his elections two years ago, Yusuf rejected on Monday any negotiations with the ousted SICS and refused to call Ethiopian troops occupiers.

US government officials and experts have admitted that secret funding by the CIA for Somali warlords against the SICS has backfired, empowering the same groups the Bush administration has sought to marginalize.

Warlords have controlled Mogadishu since the 1991 overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

A disastrous attempt by US forces to pacify Somalia in the early1990 s ended with a humiliating withdrawal after Somali militias shot down two US helicopters, killed 18soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets.

Gen. William Ward, deputy commander of US European Command, who is seen by some as a contender to lead the Pentagon's Africa operations, ruled out on Friday sending troops to chaos-marred Somalia, but at least for the time being.

Experts fear the Horn of Africa country is descending into an Iraqi-style instability, especially after the SICS vowed unabated resistance and guerrilla war.