Re: US military attacks village in Somalia
On Jan 9, 2007, at 5:22 PM, Michael Pugliese wrote:
On 1/9/07, double bluff mullah_omar@email.it cited: http://www.theinsider.org/
Oh kewl, another reliable source, The Insider | Conspiracy Theory News: New World Order, Conspiracy Theories, News, Government, Secret Societies, Freemasons, Extraterrestrials, War…
Well in this case it’s true, isn’t it?
Doug
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“Many dead” in U.S. strike at al Qaeda in Somalia
By Guled Mohamed Tue Jan 9, 2:33 PM ET
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Many people were killed in Somalia in a U.S.
air strike targeting al Qaeda suspects among fleeing Islamist
fighters, Somali officials said on Tuesday.
The U.S. strike, part of a wide offensive also involving Ethiopian
planes, was apparently aimed at an al Qaeda cell said to include
suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa and a
hotel on the Kenyan coast.
A Somali elder or traditional leader reported a second U.S. air
attack on Tuesday that killed up to 27 people but that could not be
confirmed by other sources.
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed one air attack on Sunday against the
top al Qaeda leadership in east Africa. He would not comment on
whether the raid was successful but said it was based on “credible
intelligence.”
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said the air strike was believed to have killed one of three al Qaeda
members suspected in the embassy bombings.
Washington is hoping to find a handful of al Qaeda members, including
Abu Talha al-Sudani, named in grand jury testimony against Osama bin
Laden as a Sudanese explosives expert and whom U.S. intelligence
believes is al Qaeda’s east African boss.
It believes al-Sudani, Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan
Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan are among Islamists who fled towards the
Kenyan border after Ethiopia’s military helped the interim Somali
government oust them from the capital last month.
“We don’t know which one is the one at the moment,” the intelligence
official said.
The attack was Washington’s first overt military intervention in
Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994,
chronicled in the film “Black Hawk Down.”
Earlier Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to state
categorically whether the U.S. military had mounted other air strikes
but indicated he had mentioned all U.S. operations.
“MANY DEAD BODIES”
A senior Somali official said an AC-130 plane, a formidable weapon
armed with rapid-firing cannons, rained gunfire on the remote village
of Hayo but said the attack was late on Monday.
“There are so many dead bodies and animals in the village,” the
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
The Somali elder, from the southern town of Afmadow, said a second
strike killed between 22 and 27 people in the same area.
“U.S. planes struck at Bankajirow this morning between 10 a.m. and
noon (0700-0900 GMT),” the elder, who did not want to be identified,
said by telephone.
A U.S. official, who declined to be named, suggested any air
operations on Tuesday were not carried out by American forces.
Both Hayo and Bankajirow are near the Kenyan border.
Somalia’s defense and information ministers told Reuters air strikes
had taken place south of Hayo, near Ras Kamboni and Badmadow at
Somalia’s southernmost tip.
Neither would say if the United States or Ethiopia, which has jets
and helicopters in the area, carried them out, or precisely when they
occurred.
In another sign of a more muscular U.S. action, the U.S. Navy said it
had moved the aircraft carrier Eisenhower to the Somali coast to beef
up a naval cordon to cut off any Islamist escape via the Indian
Ocean. Kenya has sealed its border.
As news of the air attacks emerged, rocket-propelled grenades were
fired at a building in Mogadishu housing Ethiopian and Somali
government troops, where at least one person died in a weekend attack.
A Reuters reporter heard the RPGs followed by a 10 minute exchange of
fire with automatic weapons. A car was burning outside the compound.
A government source said one Somali soldier was killed and one
wounded in the firefight.
The European Union, which has frequently differed with Washington
over Somalia, criticized the U.S. air raid.
“Any incident of this kind is not helpful in the long term,” a
spokesman for the European Commission said.
Somali Information Minister Ali Ahmed Jama “Jangali” said: “The
Islamists are hiding in the thick jungle and it’s only air strikes
that eliminate them from there. The strikes … will continue until
no terrorist survives.”
The U.S. embassy in Nairobi renewed a warning to Americans in the
region of the danger of terrorist attacks, saying defeat could push
al-Qaeda agents into other parts of the region.
The presence of Ethiopians in Somalia has uncorked an ancient enmity
between the neighbors, and a handful of protests and small attacks
have broken out in Mogadishu.
Ethiopian troops are helping the government assert its authority in
the gun-filled country while an African peacekeeping force is
assembled. It is the 14th attempt to impose order since the 1991
ouster of the last national president sparked anarchy.
(Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle; Mohammed Abbas in Bahrain,
David Morgan in Washington and Bryson Hull in Nairobi)
January 9th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Hi! I wonder if Michael will get many economic posts with his suggested strategy!
I think that the US policy will help return Somalia to anarchy and recruit more jihadists. I have a couple of posts on Somalia at my new blog at kenthink7 (forget the rest of the address)