Abu Hannah
Slave of Allah
NAIROBI, Kenya, June 2 — American forces struck inside Somalia on Friday, bombarding a mountainous area where suspected militants were hiding out, Somali officials said Saturday. It was the third known American strike on Somali soil this year.
According to Somali security forces, an American warship fired cruise missiles into the area after two boatloads of heavily armed gunmen landed at Bargal, a small fishing village on the north Somali coast, and then escaped into the mountains.
Hassan Dahir, the vice president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia, said eight Islamist militants had been killed, including one who was an American citizen, according to documents found on his body.
Mr. Dahir also said three American Special Operations soldiers were on the ground, helping Somali security forces. “Three Americans came into the mountains with us,” he said. “They are counterterrorism experts and they are investigating the computers that the militants were carrying.”
An American counterterrorism official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “We’re looking very hard at the information on the reported strike in Somalia,” but he had no information on whether the dead militants included any of the wanted Al Qaeda operatives in the region.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, attending a conference of defense ministers in Singapore, declined to comment on what he described as “possibly an ongoing opeation.”
The operation Mr. Dahir described was congruent with an attack in early January in which American forces bombed an area in southern Somalia and then sent in a small contingent of Special Forces soldiers to investigate the remains of suspected militants. A few weeks later, American forces struck again, trying to kill a militant Islamist leader.
On Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in an e-mail message, “This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them.”
The statement went on to say, “The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations, is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies.”
Mr. Dahir said that the militants, thought to number around 15, were from Somalia’s recently ousted Islamist administration and that they had come by boat to northern Somalia in an attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden and escape the country.
Among the eight killed, he said, were men from Eritrea, Yemen, England and Sweden. He said that Somali officials contacted American officers in Djibouti, where there is a large American military base, after a gun battle on Friday evening in which the militants wounded four Somali security agents and then melted into the mountains. He said that an American destroyer off Bargal fired the cruise missiles into the area.
The strike fit a pattern of a broader American strategy to hunt down Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa, especially Al Qaeda operatives. American officials have accused Islamist clerics in Somalia of sheltering Al Qaeda agents, including the mastermind of the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
American forces played an influential but behind-the-scenes role in helping overthrow the Islamist movement that controlled Somalia for six months last year. In late December, Ethiopian troops, aided by American satellite imagery and battlefield intelligence, routed Islamist forces.
That paved the way for Somalia’s internationally recognized but weak transitional government to take loose control of the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time.
American officials say that several Qaeda suspects are still inside the country.
A naval task force of about 15 ships from several countries, including the United States, routinely patrols the area off Somalia. It is known as Combined Task Force 150.
According to Somali security forces, an American warship fired cruise missiles into the area after two boatloads of heavily armed gunmen landed at Bargal, a small fishing village on the north Somali coast, and then escaped into the mountains.
Hassan Dahir, the vice president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia, said eight Islamist militants had been killed, including one who was an American citizen, according to documents found on his body.
Mr. Dahir also said three American Special Operations soldiers were on the ground, helping Somali security forces. “Three Americans came into the mountains with us,” he said. “They are counterterrorism experts and they are investigating the computers that the militants were carrying.”
An American counterterrorism official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “We’re looking very hard at the information on the reported strike in Somalia,” but he had no information on whether the dead militants included any of the wanted Al Qaeda operatives in the region.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, attending a conference of defense ministers in Singapore, declined to comment on what he described as “possibly an ongoing opeation.”
The operation Mr. Dahir described was congruent with an attack in early January in which American forces bombed an area in southern Somalia and then sent in a small contingent of Special Forces soldiers to investigate the remains of suspected militants. A few weeks later, American forces struck again, trying to kill a militant Islamist leader.
On Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in an e-mail message, “This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them.”
The statement went on to say, “The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations, is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies.”
Mr. Dahir said that the militants, thought to number around 15, were from Somalia’s recently ousted Islamist administration and that they had come by boat to northern Somalia in an attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden and escape the country.
Among the eight killed, he said, were men from Eritrea, Yemen, England and Sweden. He said that Somali officials contacted American officers in Djibouti, where there is a large American military base, after a gun battle on Friday evening in which the militants wounded four Somali security agents and then melted into the mountains. He said that an American destroyer off Bargal fired the cruise missiles into the area.
The strike fit a pattern of a broader American strategy to hunt down Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa, especially Al Qaeda operatives. American officials have accused Islamist clerics in Somalia of sheltering Al Qaeda agents, including the mastermind of the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
American forces played an influential but behind-the-scenes role in helping overthrow the Islamist movement that controlled Somalia for six months last year. In late December, Ethiopian troops, aided by American satellite imagery and battlefield intelligence, routed Islamist forces.
That paved the way for Somalia’s internationally recognized but weak transitional government to take loose control of the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time.
American officials say that several Qaeda suspects are still inside the country.
A naval task force of about 15 ships from several countries, including the United States, routinely patrols the area off Somalia. It is known as Combined Task Force 150.
