Washington said it launched air strikes on a separate al Shabaab base on Saturday, killing more than 150 Islamist fighters, though the militants said the number was exaggerated.
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These are some of the most aggressive military actions in Somalia since a USA military intervention in the early 1990s during a starvation culminated in the so-called Black Hawk Down battle, with heavy US losses.
Special forces operatives in two helicopters targeted the Shebab-controlled town of Awdhegele, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Somali government officials and a Shebab spokesman said.
Al-Shabab said Wednesday that its fighters had foiled the attack by foreign forces on Awdhegle town in southern Somalia overnight, and that they retreated with casualties.
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.
Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab, a spokesman for al-Shabab, told a militant-run online radio that the unidentified foreign forces used two helicopters.
Memories of that incident have colored USA policy on Somalia for years, with successive administrations reluctant to get involved or risk a deadly repeat as al-Shabab gained strength.
No country has so far said it carried out the attack alleged by al-Shabab.
Another Somali intelligence official provided a similar account to AP.
There was no immediate Al-Shabaab response to the claim that Ugas and Mire had been killed.
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.
There was no claim of responsibility for the blast, but it appeared to be part of attacks waged by al-Shabab, which was ousted from Mogadishu by African Union peacekeepers in 2011.
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“That al-Shabaab had that many recruits in training at just one location.is a worrying indicator of the group’s continued relevance and its power to attract”, Pham said. The Pentagon said 150 fighters were killed in that assault, a figure al-Shabaab described as an exaggeration.
