U.S.: Somalia Strikes Missed Targets
None of the top three suspected terrorists in Somalia were killed in a U.S. airstrike this week, but Somalis with close ties to al Qaeda were slain, a senior U.S. official in the region said Thursday.
A day earlier, a Somali official had said a U.S. intelligence report had referred to the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed — one of the three senior al Qaeda members believed responsible for bombing U.S. embassies in East Africa.
In Washington, U.S. government officials said Wednesday they had no reason to believe that the chief suspect, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, had been killed.
U.S. and Ethiopian troops in southern Somalia were still pursuing the three, the U.S. official said Thursday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record to the media.
In Washington, officials had said U.S. special operations forces were in Somalia. U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday a small American team has been providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground. The officials provided little detail and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The U.S. forces entered Somalia with Ethiopian forces late last month when Ethiopians launched their attack against a Somali Islamic movement said to be sheltering al-Qaida figures, one of the officials said.
Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that al Qaeda suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was killed. He said he learned of the death in a U.S. intelligence report passed on to the Somali authorities. Fazul, one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, has evaded capture for eight years.
Somalia's deputy prime minister said Wednesday that American troops were needed on the ground to root out extremists from his troubled country, and he expected the troops soon.
Two senior Pentagon officials said they had heard of no plans to put any sizable contingent of Americans in Somalia. However, small teams of liaison officers — such as Special Forces or trainers — are another matter, the officials said.
All three officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.
CBS News Investigative Reporter Phil Hirschkorn reports Mohammed, also known as Haroun Fazil, had a key role in the twin truck bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, which killed 224 people and injured thousands. He's also trained Islamic militants in Somalia and allegedly organized more recent attacks on Israeli tourists in Kenya. Read Hirschkorn's report.
"He's an extraordinarily dangerous individual," Dan Coleman, a retired FBI agent who spent years hunting al Qaeda, told CBS News. "He's the real deal."
Mohammed is seen in