U.S. forces hunting al-Qaida plotters in Somalia

NAIROBI, Kenya – Ethiopian and U.S. forces were in pursuit of three top al-Qaida suspects Thursday, with a senior U.S. official confirming that none of them was killed in a U.S. airstrike and they were believed to still be in Somalia.

The official in Kenya, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media, said U.S. special operations forces were focused solely on tracking down the suspected terrorists and not members of the Somali Islamic movement that had challenged the country’s government for power.

A day earlier, Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president’s chief of staff, said a U.S. intelligence report had referred to the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the three senior al-Qaida members blamed for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But the U.S. official said he was confident none of the three top al-Qaida suspects believed to be in Somalia was killed in the airstrike Monday.

“The three high-value targets are still of intense interest to us,” the official said. “What we’re doing is still ongoing, we’re still in pursuit, us and the Ethiopians.”

The official also contradicted numerous statements by Somali government officials in recent days, saying the U.S. had carried out just one airstrike and only eight to 10 militants with ties to al-Qaida were killed. He said subsequent reports of more airstrikes and civilian casualties were rumors and disinformation spread by the Islamic extremists.

U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday that U.S. special forces were in Somalia hunting al-Qaida fighters and providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces. The U.S. forces entered the country last month when Ethiopia launched its attack against the Islamic movement, one of the officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Most of the Islamic militiamen have since dispersed, but a few hard-core members have fled to Somalia’s southernmost point near the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. has repeatedly accused the group of harboring three top terror suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings: Fazul, Abu Talha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.