The U.S. launched more air strikes in southern Somalia Tuesday on Islamic extremists believed to be hiding members of an al Qaeda cell wanted for two 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.
The latest attacks killed at least 27 civilians in the town of Afmadow, lawmaker Abdiqadir Daqane told The Associated Press. He said two newlyweds were among the dead.
Two helicopters "fired several rockets toward the road that leads to the Kenyan border," said Ali Seed Yusuf, a resident of Afmadow.
Eyewitnesses confirmed to AP that another attack was carried out Monday evening east of Afmadow, killing at least four civilians.
"My 4-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale told AP by telephone from the outskirts of Afmadow. "We also heard 14 massive explosions."
A Somali official told Reuters that there were "so many dead bodies and animals in the village" of Hayo, near Afmadow.
About 250 kilometres south of Afmadow, an attack on the island of Badmadow, in an area known as Ras Kamboni, killed many people on Monday, Somali officials confirmed Tuesday.
"The strike was carried out after it had been confirmed that al Qaeda members were hiding there in the area," government spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari told AP.
"We don't known how many people were killed in the attack but we understand there were a lot of casualties... most were Islamic fighters."
In another apparent attack, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. struck southern Somalia on Sunday, targeting "principal" al Qaeda leadership.
"I will acknowledge the fact that the United States military did conduct a strike in southern Somalia on Sunday," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
"The target of the strike was the principal al Qaeda leadership in the region."
U.S. involvement
The mission is the first overt military action taken by the U.S. in Somalia since the 1990s.
U.S., Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence all claim that some Islamist fighters have provided shelter to al Qaeda members.
The members are believed to include suspects in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 250 people as well as a 2002 hotel bombing on the Kenyan coast.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said last month that Islamic militants in Kismayo were sheltering alleged bombers Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Talha al-Sudani.
U.S. intelligence claims al-Sudani, named in a grand jury testimony against Osama bin Laden as a Sudanese explosives expert, is al Qaeda's east African boss, reported Reuters.
The men are also believed to have played a role in the 2002 attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya that killed 15 people.
Somalia's president would not confirm the attacks but said he supported any U.S. action taken against the militants.
"The U.S. has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," President Abdullahi Yusuf told reporters from the capital of Mogadishu.
"They have a right to take action. We are fighting terrorists, whether they are international terrorists or Somalis. We are not fighting Islam. Somalis are 100 per cent Muslim," he said.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. government official confirmed that at least one AC-130 gunship was used in Monday's attacks.
The aircraft are heavily armed with sophisticated sensors that can go after difficult targets day or night. They are operated by the Special Operations Command and are frequently used against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military said Tuesday that it had sent the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to join three other U.S. warships off the Somali coast already involved in anti-terror operations. The aircraft carrier belongs to the Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.
Also on Tuesday, Ethiopia's prime minister said suspected terrorists from Canada, Britain, Pakistan and elsewhere had been taken prisoner or killed in military operations in Somalia.
"Many international terrorists are dead in Somalia," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told a French newspaper. "Photographs have been taken and passports from different countries have been collected. The Kenyans are holding Eritrean and Canadian passport holders. We have injured people coming from Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan, the United Kingdom."
Last week, Kenyan police detained a man holding a Canadian passport that is suspected of having ties to the radical Islamists currently in hiding.
The unidentified man is being held by police in northern Kenya after he was caught trying to cross into the country.
The U.S. has been attempting to capture al Qaeda members attempting to flee Somalia after Ethiopian-backed government troops pushed their Islamist rivals out of Mogadishu in late December.
Since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, Somalia has not had an effective central government to rule the Horn of Africa nation of 7 million people.
A UN peacekeeping force, including U.S. troops, arrived in 1992, but fighters loyal to clan leader Mohamed Farah Aideed shot down a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and battled American troops, killing 18.
Since then, at least 13 attempts at government have failed with the current UN-backed government taking power in 2004.
With files from The Associated Press
