U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia

By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: January 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/africa/09somalia.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=cc4f29d01f65cf61&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — A United States Air Force gunship carried out a strike Sunday night against suspected operatives of Al Qaeda in southern Somalia, a senior Pentagon official said Monday night.

The attack by an AC-130 gunship, which is operated by the Special Forces Command, is believed to have produced multiple casualties, the official said. It was not known Monday night whether the casualties included members of a Qaeda cell that American officials have long suspected was hiding in Somalia.

Special Forces units operating from an American base in Djibouti are conducting a hunt for Qaeda operatives who have been forced to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital, since Islamic militants were driven from there by an Ethiopian military offensive last month.

The American attack was first reported by CBS News.

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.

The search for the terrorist suspects has driven American policy toward Somalia for several years.

Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency began making cash payments to a group of Somali warlords who pledged to help hunt down members of the Qaeda cell.

After Islamist militias took control of Mogadishu in the summer, officials in Washington charged that the Islamists had ties to the terror suspects, and made demands for their handover to American custody.

The Ethiopian military offensive that began last month recently drove the Islamists from the seaside Somali capital, raising hopes within Washington that the Qaeda operatives might surface as they fled the protection of the Islamists. The Islamists have retreated to areas around the southern port city of Kismayo. Ethiopian officials have said they have intelligence reports that members of the Qaeda cell were hiding near the city.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed propeller plane that, because of its slow speed, operates primarily at night and can direct an immense barrage of gunfire onto a target as it circles overhead.

The attack against suspected Qaeda operatives is the sort of targeted operation that senior Bush administration officials have been pressing the Special Operation Command, based in Tampa, Fla., to undertake in recent years.

But officials have said that Special Operations forces have had difficulty carrying out targeted strikes in the past because of the difficulty establishing the whereabouts of wanted terrorists or getting forces in place when a suspected militant is located.

The Central Intelligence Agency has killed a small number of suspected Qaeda members, using a pilotless drone armed with a missile. Among them were five people killed in Yemen in 2002.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.