Ethiopian and US forces were chasing three top al Qaeda suspects in Somalia yesterday, with a senior US official confirming none of them had been killed in a US air strike.
US operations were focused solely on tracking down men involved in international terrorism, he said, not Somali Islamic fundamentalists who had challenged the country's government for power and were accused of harbouring al Qaeda suspects.
The Somali president's chief of staff said on Wednesday that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the al Qaeda cell leader for East Africa, had been killed in a US air strike on Monday. But the US official said he was confident none of the three top terror suspects was dead.
"The three high-value targets are still of intense interest to us," the official said. "We're still in pursuit, us and the Ethiopians."
The official also contradicted Somali officials, saying the US had carried out only one air strike on Monday and only eight to 10 militants with al Qaeda ties have been killed. He said reports of more air strikes and civilian casualties was disinformation spread by the Islamists.
In Washington, officials said US special operations forces were in Somalia. Officials denied planning to send large numbers of ground troops.
Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia on Christmas Eve to attack the Somali Islamic fundamentalist movement. Most of the Islamic militiamen have dispersed, but a few hardcore members have fled south towards the Kenyan border.
The US has repeatedly accused the group of harbouring three top terror suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania: Fazul, Abu Talha al Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.
The US navy has forces off the Somali coast. The official said Kenyan naval forces had set up a marine blockade and the Kenyan army was also intercepting suspects trying to sneak across the border.
Earlier this week, police at the Kenyan border town of Kiunga arrested the wives and children of two of the embassy bombing suspects.
At the tip of Somalia, government and Ethiopian forces yesterday skirmished with Islamic militiamen. Residents said they heard fighting in Ras Kamboni, where extremists with ties to al Qaeda were once believed to have trained.
The Red Cross said it had treated more than 850 wounded, both civilians and soldiers, since fighting began just over two weeks ago.-AP
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