Somalia confirms 30 killed in US airstrike (Roundup)

Jan 9, 2007, 16:34 GMT

Washington/Nairobi - The Somali interim government confirmed Tuesday that at least 30 people were killed in a US airstrike against a suspected al-Qaeda cell in southern Somalia.

'US fighter planes have attacked three villages near the Kenyan border,' government spokesman Colonel Omar Addi said on Tuesday in the port town of Kismayo, confirming that the Somali government had authorized the attacks.

However, a spokeswoman for the US Combined Joint Task Force, stationed in Djibouti, with responsibility for the US fight against terrorism, would not comment. 'We have no information,' she said.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the al-Qaeda leader believed to be responsible for the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was among those killed, the US broadcaster CNN reported. Those attacks killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf defended the US airstrikes, saying that the US has 'the right' to take action against suspected terrorists.

Somalia's transitional government was informed beforehand of the strikes, it said in a statement. In addition 28 suspected Islamists were arrested, the statement added.

Witnesses to the attacks meanwhile claimed that among the dead were six members of the same family, who had been attending a wedding. No immediate confirmation of this claim was however available.

A close aide of Prime Minister Ali Gedi had earlier confirmed that one of those responsible for the 1998 attacks was killed, according to a Washington Post report, and also said authorization for further operations had been granted.

'We gave permission for actions that are more than airstrikes,' Abdirisak Hassan told the Post in an interview conducted early Tuesday.

An AC-130 gunship flying from Djibouti carried out the attack in southern Somalia after US intelligence tracked the operatives with an unmanned aerial drone, CBS news first reported Monday.

The US had expressed concern that Somalia could become a staging ground for terrorists. Last week State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US had stationed forces off the coast of Somalia and was working with other countries in the region to ensure that Islamists linked to terrorism are not able to flee the country.

In late December troops of Somalia's transitional government backed by Ethiopian forces ousted the Islamist group which had been controlling Mogadishu since June.

Last week the second-in-command of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Ayman al-Zawahri, called on the Islamic Courts group in Somalia to recompose itself in what he called 'the new battlefield,' the war waged by the US and its 'anti-Islamic allies' against Islam and Muslims.