US launches air strike on Somali village

Staff and agencies
Tuesday January 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A US air strike on a Somali village, thought to be the hideout of an al-Qaida cell, has left "many dead", reports said today.

The attack yesterday, by a heavily armed gunship, allegedly targeted Islamists wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in other African countries.

The suspects were spotted hiding on the remote Badmadow island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border. The area of the island that was attacked is known as Ras Kamboni and is suspected of being a terror training base.

"The US were trying to kill the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the bomb attacks on their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," Somalia's deputy prime minister, Hussein Aideed, said. "They have our full support for the attacks."

The government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said the strike was carried out after al-Qaida members were confirmed to be hiding in the area.

"We don't know how many people were killed in the attack but we understand there were a lot of casualties," he said. "Most were Islamic fighters."

Witnesses said at least four civilians were killed in the attack, including a small boy.

"My four-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale said. "The plane was firing at other areas in Ras Kamboni. We could see smoke from the area. We also heard 14 massive explosions."

In the 1970's there was a DJ/comedian who had a TV show and in one of the sketches he would dress as an exaggerated caricature of a US general responsible for dealing with terrorist or warlike incursions - his stock response to every situation (large or small) was 'Bomb the Bastards!' Of course everybody knew it was satire and unfeasible as a solution to any incident but it would appear that the US (like Israel) have been using Kenny Everett's show as a training manual.
Bombing a village to be rid of a couple of terrorists is surely (to put it mildly) overkill. What happened to the crack commando units, the professional soldiers etc. that they are supposed to have at their command - could they not have been sent in to deal with the al-Qaida terrorists ? Oh, sorry I forgot they are killing innocent civilians in Iraq.