U.S. Strike in Somalia Targets Al-Qaeda Figure
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 9, 2007
A U.S. Navy AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members inside Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure.
The strike in southern Somalia was launched at night from the U.S. Central Command base in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the area.
[...]
link -
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801635.html>
As far as I know, outside of Reuters online (and, therefore, Yahoo! News) the story's follow-up received very little attention:
Financial Times
Somalia strike ‘missed al-Qaeda targets’
By Andrew England in Cairo
Published: January 11 2007 18:40 | Last updated: January 11 2007 18:40
The controversial US air strike in southern Somalia missed all three top al-Qaeda members Washington alleges are hiding out in the country, a senior US official said on Thursday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said eight to 10 “al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists” were killed in Monday’s attack, but gave no details.
On Tuesday the Pentagon confirmed that an AC130 aircraft was used to target “the principal al-Qaeda leadership in the region”. The attack marked the first overt US military intervention in the Horn of Africa nation since its doomed invasion in the 1990s.
The strike was criticised by the European Commission, as well as the Arab League which claimed it had killed “many innocent victims” and demanded that Washington refrain from further attacks. There were no accurate casualty figures.
[...]
link -
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e629d56a-a18b-11db-8bc1-0000779e2340.html>
Missed all three you say? Imagine that.
Funny how this sort of thing always manages to slip, like a rat into a crawl space, right on through the conveniently placed cracks in the US' info-structure.
.d.