The United States has launched an air strike on a suspected al Qaeda warlord in Somalia which is reported to have left many dead.
An AC-130 attack plane rained gunfire on the southern village of Hayo, believed to be a terror training base.
The warlord is wanted for the bombings of two US embassies in east Africa which killed more than 250 people and his cell has been blamed for the attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002 which killed 15.
It's claimed British terror suspects could have been injured or captured in the bombing. There were reports at the weekend that British passport holders were involved in fighting.
However, the Foreign Office said it could not confirm the latest claims that Britons were among those injured.
"We take these reports very seriously and will do everything we can to look into them," a spokeswoman said.
"We are in constant touch with the Ethiopian and Somalian governments and will look into this matter."
There are strong links between the UK and Somalia and officials are not ruling out the possibility that Britons are involved in the fighting.
The strike is understood to have been ordered after members of the cell were tracked by aerial surveillance after they fled the wartorn capital, Mogadishu.
Somali government sources claimed most of those killed were Islamist fighters. However, witnesses said at least four civilians died in the attack, including a young boy. The claims could not be independently verified.
Somalia’s deputy prime minister, Hussein Aideed, said: “The US were trying to kill the al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the bomb attacks on their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They have our full support for the attacks.”
The strike is the first US military intervention in Somalia since the early Nineties when troops were withdrawn after a disastrous operation in Mogadishu, chronicled in the film Black Hawk Down, which saw 18 army rangers and Delta Force special troops killed.
One of the targets was Abu Talha al-Sudani, according to the Washington Post, who is alleged to have been the financier for Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, blamed for the 1998 bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
It was not clear whether Al-Sudani, or other al Qaeda leaders were hit.
The attack was first reported by CBS News citing Pentagon sources, who said it targeted the senior al Qaeda leader in east Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 attacks.
It came as President Bush is poised to announce that America will send tens of thousands more troops to Iraq and as a poll showed support for British troops staying there at an all-time low.
Al-Sudani is Sudanese and has lived in Somalia since 1993. He is an explosives expert suspected of having close links to Osama bin Laden in the mid-Nineties.
The US military has sent the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier to join three other warships conducting anti-terror operations off the coast of Somalia, and aircraft have been flying surveillance missions over the country.
The strike by the US gunship, based at a US base in Djibouti, happened yesterday in Badmadow, an island on the southern tip of Somalia and close to the Kenyan border, according to eyewitnesses.
It took place after forces loyal to Somalia’s transitional government, backed by Ethiopian soldiers, forced Islamic fighters to flee Mogadishu.
“The strike was carried out after it had been confirmed that al Qaeda members are hiding in the Somalia Ethiopia Eritrea area,” Somalian government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
Victim Mohamed Mahmud Burale said: “My four-year-old boy was killed in the strike. The plane was firing at other areas in Ras Kamboni. We could see smoke from the area. We also heard 14 massive explosions.”
Islamic fighters took Mogadishu and much of the south in June, and threatened just weeks ago to overrun the interim government in its provincial base of Baidoa.
But the intervention of Ethiopian forces pushed them back from the Baidoa area, then forced them to flee Mogadishu and their final stronghold in the southern port Kismayu.
Hundreds of Islamic fighters are now hiding in the hills of southern Somalia, pursued by Ethiopian and Somali forces, while Kenya’s military is trying to seal its border. In recent years, Al-Sudani was named by the CIA as being a close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, head of the Mogadishu-based network that provides support to al Qaeda in Somalia.
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