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    US Forces Fire Missiles Into Somalia at a Kenyan
    By Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 04 March 2008

    Nairobi, Kenya - American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia on Monday, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets.

    Residents reached by telephone said that three civilians were wounded, and that the only other casualties were three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.

    Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, said the target was a "known Al Qaeda terrorist."

    The missile strike was aimed at Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan born in 1979 who is wanted by the F.B.I. for questioning in the nearly simultaneous attacks in 2002 on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and on an Israeli airliner taking off from there, said three American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the strike.

    An American military official said the naval attack on Monday was carried out with at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine. The official said the missiles were believed to have hit their targets. Witnesses on the ground, though, described the attack differently.

    "I did not know from where they were launched, but what I know is that they hit a house in this town," said Muhammad Amin Abdullahi Osman, of Dhobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border.

    Mr. Muhammad said two missiles slammed into the house around 3:30 a.m.

    In the attacks to which Mr. Nabhan has been linked, three suicide bombers drove up to the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa on Nov. 28, 2002, and blew themselves up, killing 3 Israeli tourists and 10 Kenyans. That attack took place after terrorists aimed shoulder-fired missiles at an Israeli airliner taking off from Mombasa's airport, but missed.

    The Kenyan police say Mr. Nabhan bought the vehicle used in the hotel bombing. Kenyan authorities also suspect that Mr. Nabhan was involved in the bombings of United States Embassies in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998, in which more than 200 people were killed and 5,000 wounded.

    The attack on Monday was not the first time that American forces had fired missiles into Somalia or used airstrikes in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives. They did so at least three times last year.

    Dhobley lies in the growing swath of southern Somalia that seems to be falling under control of the Islamist movement once again. The Islamists rose to power in 2006 and brought a degree of law and order to Somalia for the first time since the central government collapsed in 1991.

    But they were driven out of Somalia in late 2006 and early 2007 by a joint Ethiopian-American offensive. In the past several months, the Islamists seem to be making a comeback, taking over towns in southern Somalia, including Dhobley, and inflicting a steady stream of casualties on Ethiopian forces with suicide bombs and hit-and-run attacks. Efforts by foreign diplomats and the United Nations to broker a truce have failed, and concerns are rising that Somalia could be headed toward another war-induced famine like the one it suffered in the early 1990s.

    --------

    Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia, and Margot Williams from New York.

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    Somalis Protest Over US Bombing
    BBC News

    Tuesday 04 March 2008

    Hundreds of women and children have marched through the Somali town bombed by the US on Monday, chanting anti-American slogans.

    At least four civilians were reportedly killed but an Islamist spokesman said none of their fighters were hurt.

    The US said the attack was aimed at a "known al-Qaeda terrorist" but has not said whether its goal was achieved.

    Islamist insurgents seized Dhoble town last week and reports said a leader, Hassan Turki, had been in the area.

    Mr Turki is on the US list of "financers of terrorism".

    The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the capital, Mogadishu, says he has not been seen or heard from since the attack.

    The Somali government has not yet commented on whether it gave the US permission to launch the air strike on its territory.

    New Strategy

    One of the organisers of the protest in Dhoble told the BBC she feared that some people may still be trapped under the rubble of the buildings destroyed when three missiles landed on the town.

    "We are complaining about the air strike by the superpower on civilians," said Ruun Sheikh Mohammed, who runs a local women's group.

    There are reports that at least one of the blasts may have been caused by a cruise missile.

    The town's residents also say they could see US planes flying overhead - these could still be heard on Tuesday morning, they said.

    The Islamists have reportedly been regrouping in the area in recent weeks.

    Our reporter says the Islamists have adopted a new strategy of launching attacks outside the capital.

    Islamist spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow said the buildings destroyed had all been inhabited by civilians.

    They were ousted from the capital, Mogadishu in December 2006 by government forces, backed up by Ethiopia, with some intelligence from the US.

    Dhoble was the last town they held.

    The US has an anti-terror task force based in neighbouring Djibouti and bombed the area a year ago.

    The US accused the Somali Islamists of harbouring those responsible for the 1998 attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

    The Islamists denied this, as well as reports they had links to al-Qaeda.

    Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.

    Last month, a senior UN official told the BBC that Somalia was the worst place in the world for children.