Peter Cook, a Pentagon spokesman, said that attack Saturday was carried out to safeguard “our African Union Mission” in Somalia and that “the fighters who were scheduled to depart the camp posed an imminent threat” to the mission.
Advertisement
“It was a high-profile target, and chances of capture were challenged by a stiff resistance by militants guarding the house targeted by the special forces, which forced the commando to resort to the kill or capture method”, the official said. It was the deadliest US strike on the terrorist group since it emerged a decade ago with the goal of turning Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Then-President Bill Clinton pulled US forces out of Somalia, with the incident souring some people’s feelings about USA military’s intervention in certain foreign entanglements. The official number of al-Shabab fighters remains unclear, but estimates put them at fewer than 10,000.
The military did not specify the location of where the U.S. thought an attack might happen, but it is well known that the U.S. maintains a limited military presence at the airport in Mogadishu and that small numbers of U.S. Special Operations forces have traveled to other locations in the country.
Helicopter gunships struck training camps used by al-Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia’s southern Lower Shabelle region, a witness and a local official said.
He said the Somali troops successfully conducted the mission.
Al-Shabaab acknowledged the Awdhiigle clash on its Twitter account, though it related a far different outcome: claiming its fighters “thwarted… a landing operation by foreign forces”.
The concern is so great that USA warplanes and drones attacked an al-Shabab training camp on Saturday, killing more than 150 fighters, according to the Pentagon.
Residents of Awdhegle described bullet-pockmarked walls blackened from explosions after the attack.
Al-Shabab claims responsibility for bombing of police station in Mogadishu, killing at least three police officers.
In the past two weeks, al-Shabaab has launched mortar bomb attacks near the presidential palace, blown up a auto bomb near a busy park in Mogadishu, and set off twin blasts in a town northwest of the capital.
Advertisement
This story has been corrected to show that US forces did not take part in the firefight.
