Ethiopian helicopters helped by US intelligence nearly hit fleeing Somali Islamist leaders who had abandoned their last stronghold south of Somalia, officials said yesterday.
Four helicopters struck positions 3km inside Kenya and "nearly hit three off-road vehicles we strongly believed to be carrying the Islamist leaders," a top Kenyan official said, citing intelligence.
The trucks were inside Somali territory but some of the bombs from the attack fell on the Kenyan side of the border.
US naval forces based in Djibouti joined the hunt this week for the Islamist militants with suspected al-Qaeda ties.
The Kenyan official told reporters that the three vehicles "were being trailed by a US satelite and all indications are that the [Islamists] were inside."
Four helicopters dropped six bombs on Tuesday at positions approximately 17km south of the Kenyan border post of Liboi, police confirmed.
In addition to three vehicles, an M16 rifle and a pamphlet were recovered from the trucks that had stalled inside Somalia territory, but no one was found in them, they said.
A top Somali government official confirmed the details of the incident, saying "I know of this."
The fleeing Islamist leaders were reported to be in Badade District in Somalia's Lower Jubba region, after retreating from attempts to sneak into Kenya, the official said.
"We are still searching for them," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told reporters.
The US was working closely with Somalia's Horn of Africa neighbors "to ensure that these individuals aren't able to transit those borders," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"We of course have a presence off the coast of Somalia and Horn of Africa to make sure there are no escape routes by sea where these individuals could flee," McCormack said.
He declined to provide further details about the US deployment.
Kenya has closed its border with Somalia to prevent an influx of weapons and fighters.
McCormack did not name specific extremists, but US officials have said earlier that the top layer of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) is controlled by a cell of al-Qaeda operatives.
The head of the council, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is on UN and US extremist lists.
US officials have tried to persuade the SICC to give up three men who Washington believes are in Somalia and who are wanted for suspected involvement in the 1998 bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania .
The US State Department promised it would immediately make food aid for Somalia available and join an international donors' conference to assess the country's needs, McCormack said.
The US set up the Combined Joint Task Force for the Horn of Africa in Djibouti in 2002, where a former French Foreign Legion base serves as a major hub for US counter-terrorism training and operations as well as humanitarian efforts.
Members of that 1,800-member task force have also trained with troops in Ethiopia, and US ships patrol the nearby Gulf of Aden, according to Pentagon documents.
Asked about the widely shared assumption that Ethiopia's two-week campaign to oust Somalia's Islamists enjoyed US blessing, McCormack said that Washington would have preferred a negotiated settlement.
"But it became apparent over time, and certainly very apparent in the recent weeks, that that wasn't going to happen and that the Islamic courts were intent upon trying to seize control over all of Somalia through use of arms," he said.
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