Peter Cook, another Pentagon spokesman, said Saturday’s attack 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. He didn’t say how he got the information nor specify which country the helicopters belonged to.
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The raid comes just days after the Pentagon said a massive USA airstrike killed more than 150 members of the al-Shabab terror group in the east African nation.
A Somali intelligence official told The Associated Press that the person they wanted to get was apparently killed during the fight.
This history includes an October 1993 incident in which rocket-propelled grenades downed two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters taking part in a raid targeting the forces of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The official number of al-Shabab fighters remains unclear, but estimates put them at fewer than 10,000.
He said the US forces did not fire their weapons during the mission.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the operation overnight Tuesday to Wednesday as a “US partnered raid” with USA troops accompanying Somali forces.
These are some of the most aggressive military actions in Somalia since a US military intervention in the early 1990s during a starvation culminated in the so-called Black Hawk Down battle, with heavy USA losses.
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”. He refused to be identified, fearing reprisal by militants.
Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab, a spokesman for al-Shabab, told a militant-run online radio that the unidentified foreign forces used two helicopters.
The raid, reportedly by foreign troops, targeted the Shebab-controlled town of Awdhegele, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.
He said there was gunfire between militants and al-Shabab foot soldiers that started near the police station.
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The Lieutenant compared the blast to the February attack when an explosion detonated inside a Daallo airline flight bound for Djibouti, an attack claimed by the al-Shabab militant group.
