US goes after al-Qaida targets in Somalia

[Shawnski]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military launched a strike against several suspected members of al-Qaida in Somalia, a government official said Monday night.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity, said at least one AC-130 gunship was used in the attack.

CNN, NBC and CBS first reported the military action. Citing Pentagon officials, CBS said the targets included the senior al-Qaida leader in East Africa and an al-Qaida operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070109/..._af/us_somalia

Edit for further stories/links...

WASHINGTON - Under cover of the Ethiopian move into Somalia, U.S. officials launched an intensive effort to capture or kill three key suspects in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa more than eight years ago that killed 224 people.

A U.S. Air Force Special Operations gunship struck a location Sunday night in southern Somalia where the suspects were believed to be hiding, a U.S. defense official said Monday. U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials said they did not yet know whether any of the three fugitives had been killed. "It's not clear what the outcome is at this point," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the operation was classified.

http://www.startribune.com/722/story/924082.html

The Special Forces attack is the first military action in Somalia that Pentagon officials have acknowledged since American troops departed the lawless country in the wake of the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in street fighting in Mogadishu.

American officials have long suspected that a handful of Qaeda suspects responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding inside Somalia, a country that has not had a central government since 1991.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/wo...html?ref=world

[Jayems]

I don't think anyone but you and I care...

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=35903

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Jayems

I don't think anyone but you and I care...

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=35903

Oh, I care and will be following the situation. I just don't know enough about it and it doesn't seem to be controversial.

[Devils'Advocate]

I called it:
http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=35219

I have no idea if those on the island were al-Qaida terrorists. It will be difficult for anyone to ever know, so the world will take the U.S. at its word.

But as for the rest of the Islamic fighters, they are being taken down with this. These fighters had come from the countryside where they took down one warlord at a time, forcing the warlords to abandon their lands and escape. Once they had conquered the countryside, they took over the cities from the small, powerless government that the UN helped set up. For a while it looked like Somalia was going to be united, with no warlords oppressing the people. But then Ethiopia stepped in and along with that UN-backed provisional government troops, they took over the major cities. As soon as the Ethiopians defeated the Islamic fighters in the cities the warlords came out of hiding and took their lands back. Before retreating, the Islamic fighters left their guns with the people in cities and you may have read last week that the Ethiopia-backed government tried to force the people to give up those guns. Anyhow, as I mentioned in the other thread, Ethiopia has been framing this very nicely for U.S. involvement. This is "the good guys" vs "Islamic radicals" and "extremists" and "terrorists". So I'm not surprised by this attack.

BTW - Maybe these "Islamic Fighters" are as radical as the Taliban. Maybe these "Islamic Fighters" are affiliated with Al-Qaida. I don't know. Little is know about where these guys came from, where they got their weapons, or what their goals were. All that people know is that for one week, Somalia was free of oppression from the warlords.