U.S. targets al Qaeda in Somalia air strike

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The U.S. has taken its covert war in East Africa public with an air strike this week on suspected al Qaeda leaders in Somalia.

The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that an AC-130 gunship attacked terror suspects in southern Somalia on Monday. The targets were thought to be al Qaeda operatives who carried out the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. The trio and Islamist allies have been working to make the ungoverned Somalia a terrorist safe haven.

The strike came amid a mass exodus from Mogadishu, the capital, of Islamist militants who had been routed by a combined force of the Ethiopian and Somali governments.

In a sign that more strikes could come from the U.S. or Ethiopian allies, the Navy has positioned the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower off the coast and begun flying reconnaissance missions over Somalia.

It was the first overt U.S. military strike in Somalia since 1994, shortly after Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos battled Islamist militants and clans in a 1993 street battle immortalized in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." The battle cost 18 American lives and prompted President Clinton to withdraw all U.S. forces.

Senior defense sources say the AC-130 was not the first action in and around Somalia since the September 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent placement of a U.S. military task force in Djibouti a few miles from the Somalia border. The sources said the task force has periodically launched special operations missions against militants, but they declined to give specifics of where and when.

In addition, the U.S. has sent a specialized military intelligence unit into Somalia from time to time to try to locate and identify al Qaeda operatives.

The Washington Times learned of one mission in which the unit located an al Qaeda cell in Somalia and passed the information on to Jordanian officials. "They took it from there," one defense source said. Jordanian King Abdullah II is one of America's strongest Arab allies in the war on terror.

The U.S. has been hunting three key al Qaeda leaders on the Horn of Africa who carried out the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies. They are Abu Talha al-Sudani, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.

In testimony last summer, Jendayi E. Frazer, the State Department's assistant secretary for African affairs, told Congress the three suspects "pose an immediate threat to both Somalia and international interests in the Horn of Africa."