The U.S. Special Forces Command, based in Djibouti in East Africa, was assigned the mission to capture senior Al Qaida operatives who fled Mogadishu to Kismayo in late December 2006, officials said.

The officials said an AC-130 aerial gunship strafed the strongholds on Jan. 7 as part of an attempt to assassinate Al Qaida operatives wanted for the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The operatives were fugitives who had received haven from the Al Qaida-aligned Islamic Courts, which until January 2006 was in control of most of Somalia, Middle East Newsline reported.

"They have been in our sights for a while," an official said. "We first went through diplomatic means. But that didn't work."

One of the U.S. targets was identified as the Al Qaida network chief in East Africa. The operative, identified as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was also said to have been responsible for a 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya. The other fugitives were identified as Abu Talha Al Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.

The Jan. 7 attack on the nearby southern villages of Aayo and Badel, along the border with Kenya, was the first since the U.S. military left Somalia in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in an ambush in Mogadishu.

Many people were said to have been killed in at least two U.S. air strikes, witnesses said. None of the casualties were identified as an Al Qaida operative.

"The United States has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies Kenya and Tanzania," Somali President Abdul Lahi Yusuf said.

Officials said the U.S. military has facilitated the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in a drive to expel the Islamic Courts movement.

Al Qaida operatives were said to have settled Somalia after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Officials said up to 3,000 Al Qaida-aligned fighters were believed to have reach Somalia via Yemen and bolstered the military capabilities of the Islamic Courts militia.

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