U.S. Ships Hit Qaeda In Somalia

WASHINGTON — American gunships yesterday launched attacks against two suspected members of Al Qaeda in southern Somalia, according to American television networks and wire services.

The attacks would be the first open admission of American involvement in the latest campaign by Ethiopia and Somalia's interim government to beat back the Islamic Courts Union from the African country's capital, Mogadishu. To date, American and Ethiopian officials have said Addis Ababa acted alone on Christmas when it launched the push to Mogadishu that has thus far driven the Islamists into hiding.

Last night, American officials were not confirming the strikes or saying who the Qaeda officials were.

Of interest to American counterterrorism officials, however, are two Qaeda operatives alleged to have help plan the 1998 attack on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, or Harun, and Abu Tala al Sudan. Both men are also believed by American counterterrorism officials to be leaders within the military wing of the Islamic Courts Union.

According to a report by NBC, the American strikes were based on precise intelligence that the two men were fleeing Somalia. The mission was flown out of an American special forces base in Djibouti, according to CBS News and followed the two terrorists as they were fleeing south from Mogadishu.

Over the weekend, the Arabic satellite news channel Al-Jazeera aired an audiotape from Al Qaeda's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. In it, he said, "As happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the world's strongest power was defeated by the campaigns of the mujahedeen troops going to heaven, so its slaves shall be defeated on the Muslim lands of Somalia."