US ships fire on Somali insurgents

AP/Houston Chronicle:

At least one U.S. warship bombarded a remote, mountainous village in Somalia where Islamic militants had set up a base, officials in the northern region of Puntland said today.

The attack from a U.S. destroyer took place late Friday, said Muse Gelle, the regional governor. The extremists had arrived Wednesday by speedboat at the port town of Bargal.

Gelle said the area is a dense thicket, making it difficult for security forces from the semiautonomous republic of Puntland to intervene on their own.

A local radio station quoted Puntland's leader, Ade Muse, as saying that his forces had battled with the extremists for hours before U.S. ships arrived and used their cannons. Muse said five of his troops were wounded, but that he had no information about casualties among the extremists.

A task force of coalition ships, called CTF-150, is permanently based in the northern Indian Ocean and patrols the Somali coast in hopes of intercepting international terrorists. U.S. destroyers are normally assigned to the task force and patrol in pairs.

CNN International, quoting a Pentagon official, also reported the U.S. warship's involvement. A Pentagon spokesman told the Associated Press he had no information about the incident.

"This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

"We recognize the importance of working closely with allies to seek out, identify, locate, capture, and if necessary, kill terrorists and those who would provide them safe haven," Whitman said. "The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies."

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Locals speculate that the terrorist may have come from Ras Kamboni where the Islamist were chased to in their flight from Ethiopian forces. Many of the Islamist attempted to escape by boat to Yemen during the fighting and it is possible that they could have been returning from there. If so they found a very hostile environment for their return. We need to make every place in the world difficult for these people to find sanctuary.

Bill Roggio says the target was one of the embassy bombers who have been on the run recently.

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The main target is reported to have been Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the primary architects of the 1998 suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and 17 year veteran of al Qaeda. The Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy [or CTC] has written an extensive profile on Fazul. He joined al Qaeda after traveling to Pakistan in 1990. “Within his first year in Pakistan he found himself at the Bayt al-Ansar in Peshawar, [a jihadi guest house] founded by Osama bin Laden and `Abdullah `Azzam. Fazul writes that he saw both of these men lecture at the Bayt al-Ansar during his time there.”
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He is believed to be the head of intelligence for the Islamic Courts movement that ruled Somalia for awhile. Roggio indicates the US has a special forces task force in the area too.