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6A NEWSATlie Cftarlotte ^06t Thursday, January 11,2007 A1 Qaeda hunt in Africa Continued from page 1A Somali officials, who added that “many people had died in the attacks. Abdirahman Dinari, spokesman for Somalia’s interim govern ment said: “Most of them were Islamists.” Unconfirmed reports from Somalia say civilians were among those killed, including a 4-year-old boy. At press time, a key ques tion is whether the US, in its first overt military operation in Somalia since the infa mous “BlackHawk Down” intervention in 1992 and ‘93, has managed to hit the prime targets - Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, or Abu Taha al- Sudani. The three men are believed to be behind the 1998 bomb ings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, when more than 250 people were killed by two coordinated truck blasts. Mr. Sudani is listed on Washington terror watch lists as A1 Qaeda’s point man in East Africa. Mr. Mohammed, from the Comoros archipel ago in the Indian Ocean, is suspected of orchestrating a 2002 suicide attack on an Israeli-owned Kenyan hotel. The failed attempt to shoot down a tourist airliner as it took off fi'om Mombasa air port on Kenya’s coast in 2002, heading for Tfel Aviv, also bears Mohammed’s signa ture, intelligence sources have said. “If the attacks have man aged to kill or capture some of the top East Africa people in Al Qaeda then it vindicates the actions of the U.S. and Ethiopia, and it shows the ICU has been deceiving everyone,” says Matt Bryden, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. “But if they haven’t, then it compounds what has in the past been a strategy of errors, and makes the U .S. look like it’s been sold a lemon by [Somalia’s] transitional feder al government.” The European Union issued a statement criticizing the attack. Ethiopia, which has begun unprecedented military coordination with U.S. troops in recent months, has issued no statement about the U.S. attacks, but Ethiopian officials say the U.S. and Ethiopia have dif ferent agendas in Somalia. “The Ethiopian mission was not to fight terrorism or Al Qaeda per se, it was to defend the territory of Ethiopia from the penetra tion of groups based in Somalia,” says Mohammad Dirir, minister for tourism in the Ethiopian government. “We targeted the Islamic Courts, and the Americans have their agenda, the war on terrorism.” “In Somalia, because of the failed state, it became a safe haven for all sorts of terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda,” says Dirir. “The lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Ayman Zawahiri, made statements calling on Muslims to come fight in Somalia. There are some Arab countries who are not allowing terror activities on their own territory, but don’t mind if it is exported to the Horn of Africa.” A European diplomat based in Nairobi, and who watches Somalia closely, says that “there is no doubt that people linked to Al Qaeda - not the high command - but S3Tnpa- thizers, were in Somalia, run ning training camps, recruit ing fighters, arming those fighters.” Some of those fighters were recent anivals from the wide Somali diaspora, it appears. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in an interview with the French daily Le Monde published Monday that “Many interna tional terrorists are dead in Somalia.” He said passports from different countries have been collected. “The Kenyans are holding Eritrean and Canadian passport holders. We have injured people com ing fhim Yemen, Pakistan, ERTilEA YEMEN • - DilBOimPj'bouti ETHIOPIA USAC-130airaaftat- tacked the villages of Hayi andBadmado Monday where three Al Qaeda leaders are sus pected to be hiding. No confirmed reportsyeton casualties. 500km CampLemonier, In Djibouti. Is the main US counterterrorism base In the Horn of Africa. Setup in 2002 with 1,800 US troops. US helicopter gunships at tacked villageof Hayi Tuesday w Mogadishu The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and three other US ships are now patrolling off the So mali coasttoprevent Al Qaeda suspects from escaping. 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