Foreign Fighters Headed to Yemen Clash with Puntland Armed Forces
(SomaliNet) The governor of Bari region in Puntland state, northeast Somalia Muse Gele Farole said on Thursday they had sent armed forces to Bargale coast, 560km east of Bosaso, the largest city in Puntland to crack down what he called ‘Islamist remnants’ including foreign Al-Qaeda linked operatives who reached there with boats.
“We have been tipped that there were 35 heavily armed men and were aboard two high-speed boats, so our forces were deployed in the area to confront the Islamists,” he said.
Mr. Gedi told the local media this morning that when the Islamic insurgents with two boats came off shore a day before, they had suddenly clashed with the local militia supported by Puntland forces exchanging heavy gunfire.
“After several hours of gun battle, the Islamists faced strong resistance and one of their boats was captured by Puntland troops while the other escaped into the sea where they are being surrounded by the local militia and Puntland troops,” said Gedi.
The foreign fighters include Yemenis, Afghans, Asians and Arabs with Somalis and they were from Raskaboni islands in southern Somalia heading to Yemen, according to the governor.
“The insurgents are now in the mountains of Bargale coast for safe heaven but they are in isolation and will either give in to the forces or be captured in the coming hours,” added Gele.
Meanwhile, the president of Puntland state Adde Muse Hersi declined to comment on the presence of the Islamic Courts in Puntland regions. Earlier Mr. Muse said his regional government will not allow Islamist radicals to flourish inside Puntland.
Update: US Bombs the Camp
MOGADISHU, Somalia – At least one U.S. warship bombarded a remote, mountainous village in Somalia where Islamic militants had set up a base, officials in the northern region of Puntland said Saturday.
The attack from a U.S. destroyer took place late Friday, said Muse Gelle, the regional governor. The extremists had arrived Wednesday by speedboat at the port town of Bargal.
Gelle said the area is a dense thicket, making it difficult for security forces from the semiautonomous republic of Puntland to intervene on their own.
A local radio station quoted Puntland’s leader, Ade Muse, as saying that his forces had battled with the extremists for hours before U.S. ships arrived and used their cannons. Muse said five of his troops were wounded, but that he had no information about casualties among the extremists.
A task force of coalition ships, called CTF-150, is permanently based in the northern Indian Ocean and patrols the Somali coast in hopes of intercepting international terrorists. U.S. destroyers are normally assigned to the task force and patrol in pairs.
CNN International, quoting a Pentagon official, also reported the U.S. warship’s involvement. A Pentagon spokesman told The Associated Press he had no information about the incident.
“This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
“We recognize the importance of working closely with allies to seek out, identify, locate, capture, and if necessary, kill terrorists and those who would provide them safe haven,” Whitman said. “The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies.”
At an international conference in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters who asked about the Somalia reports on Saturday, “Frankly, I don’t know exactly what was going on. I’ve been on the road. And I wouldn’t be commenting on operational activities anyway.”
Puntland’s minister of information, Mohamed Abdulrahman Banga, told the AP that the extremists arrived heavily armed in two fishing boats from southern Somalia, which they controlled for six months last year before being routed by Ethiopian troops sent to prop up a faltering Somali government.
“They had their own small boats and guns. We do not know exactly where they came from — maybe from Ras Kamboni, where they were cornered in January,” he said.
Local fishermen, contacted by telephone, said about a dozen fighters arrived Wednesday, but Puntland officials said the number could be as high as 35.
The United States has repeatedly accused Somalia’s Council of Islamic Courts of harboring international terrorists linked to al-Qaida and allegedly responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The U.S. sent a small number of special operations troops with the Ethiopian forces that drove the Islamic forces into hiding. U.S. warplanes have carried out at least two airstrikes in an attempt to kill suspected al-Qaida members, Pentagon officials have said.
In Mogadishu, unknown gunmen killed a government official, Hassan Ali Sa’id, in the capital’s southern neighborhood late Saturday as he was about to enter his house. Sa’id was district commissioner of the Howlwadaag area.
“We heard two shots and we came out and we saw our neighbor lying in the street and a car disappearing,” said Sa’id Ahmed Yonis.
Sa’id is the second district commissioner killed in Mogadishu in the past month.
NYT:
Hassan Dahir, the vice president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia, said that eight Islamist militants were killed, including one who was an American citizen, according to documents found on his body.
Mr. Dahir also said that three American Special Operations soldiers were on the ground, helping Somali security forces.
“Three Americans came into the mountains with us,” Mr. Dahir said. “They are counterterrorism experts and they are investigating the computers that the militants were carrying.”
American officials declined to comment on this information. But the operation Mr. Dahir described was congruent with an attack in early January in which American forces bombed an area in southern Somalia and then sent in a small contingent of Special Forces soldiers to investigate the remains of suspected militants. A few weeks later, American forces struck again, trying to kill a militant Islamist leader…..
Mr. Dahir said the militants, thought to number around 15, were from Somalia’s recently ousted Islamist administration and that they had come by boat to northern Somalia in an attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden and escape the country.
Among the eight killed, he said, were men from Eritrea, Yemen, England and Sweden. He said that Somali officials contacted American officers in Djibouti, where there is a large American military base, after a gun battle on Friday evening in which the militants wounded four Somali security agents and then melted into the mountains. He said that an American destroyer moored off Bargal fired the cruise missiles into the area.
