US ambassador to Kenya denies al-Qaeda man killed

Jan 11, 2007, 15:09 GMT

Addis Ababa/Nairobi - The US ambassador to Kenya on Thursday 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 an airstrike in Somalia.

The United States has confirmed that it carried out an airstrike in the region on Sunday targeting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.

'Fazul Abdullah Mohammed has not been killed nor captured,' Michael Ranneberger said in Nairobi. The ambassador also rejected speculation that many civilians died in the strikes.

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.

Former National Security Council official Roger W Cressey said that 'one would assume that a US ground presence would be required at the least to do the DNA confirmation (of the death of a terrorist suspect). It's not something you would leave to the Ethiopians, and certainly not the Somalis.'

The US government however denied reports that further deployment of aircraft and helicopters would take place.

On Wednesday, US spokesman for the State Department Sean McCormack without providing details said however that the United States wanted to prevent the escape of suspected terrorists from Somalia.

Ethiopia on Thursday confirmed carrying out airstrikes against suspected Islamist militants in southern Somalia for the previous six days, amid UN reports of civilians wounded in the strikes en route to the Kenyan border.

A spokesman for the information ministry in Addis Ababa said 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 UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Thursday that a group of around 100 people wounded in the strikes was travelling to the Kenyan border, which however remains closed to refugees from the Somali side.

'We are very concerned at what will happen to them as the border remains closed,' a UNHCR spokesman said Thursday in Liboi, the border post between Kenya and Somalia. The group are believed to be from the region of Dobley, which was targeted in some of the airstrikes.

The UN is currently negotiating with Kenyan authorities over the temporary reopening of the border. Kenya closed the frontier amid fears that fleeing Islamist militants could mingle with refugees attempting to cross. More than 160,000 Somali refugees currently live in the nearby Dadaab camp.

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).