Nairobi, Kenya – Ethiopian and U.S. forces were in pursuit of three top al-Qaeda suspects Thursday, with a senior U.S. official confirming that none of them were killed in a U.S. airstrike and 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-Qaeda 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-Qaeda 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-Qaeda were killed. He said subsequent reports of more airstrikes and civilian casualties were rumors and disinformation spread by the Islamic extremists.
Michael E. Ranneberger, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, also told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday that Fazul had not been killed.
U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday that U.S. special forces were in Somalia hunting al-Qaeda 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 between 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.
The U.S. Navy has moved additional forces into waters off the Somali coast, where they have monitored maritime traffic and interrogated crews on suspicious ships in international waters.
