Ethiopia confirms carrying out airstrikes in Somalia

Jan 11, 2007, 12:01 GMT

Addis Ababa/Nairobi - Ethiopia on Thursday confirmed carrying out airstrikes against suspected Islamist militants in southern Somalia for the previous six days.

A spokesman for the information ministry in Addis Ababa said that operations were ongoing and that the hunt for fleeing Islamists in the region would continue.

Witnesses in the region close to the Kenyan border have reported more than 50 people killed in the airstrikes, among them civilians. Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi meanwhile referred to eight 'terrorists' said to have been killed.

The United States has confirmed that it carried out an airstrike in the region on Sunday targeting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. US media citing military sources meanwhile report the presence of US special forces on the ground, although the extent of their involvement in operations was not officially confirmed.

'One would assume that a US ground presence would be required at the least to do the DNA confirmation,' former National Security Council official Roger W Cressey told the New York Times. 'It's not something you would leave to the Ethiopians, and certainly not the Somalis.'

Meanwhile the US ambassador to Kenya has denied media reports that a leading al-Qaeda terrorist believed to be responsible for the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was among those killed in the Sunday strikes.

'Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was neither killed nor detained,' Michael Ranneberger said in Nairobi. The ambassador also rejected speculation that many civilians died in the strikes.

Unrest in Somalia was not confined to the south of the country, with tensions also mounting in the capital Mogadishu. Soldiers of the interim government on Wednesday blocked off parts of the city and conducted house-to-house raids aimed at confiscating weapons.

A number of clashes were reported during the operation, although casualty figures were not available. The army was said to be focusing its searches on neighbourhoods populated by supporters of the Ayr clan, which has links with the Islamist Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)