Eight foreign Islamic militants were killed during fighting with Somali government forces in a remote, mountainous northeastern Somali area, the vice president of the region said on Saturday.
The fight against Islamic militants in Somalia has dramatically moved to the relatively peaceful northeast of the country, opening up a new battlefront between them and Somali government forces and their allies who have previously fought only in the country's south.
Hassan Dahir Mohamoud, vice president of the semiautonomous northeastern region of Puntland, said there were no civilian casualties because the area is uninhabited. Earlier reports had said the fighting took place in a village, and it is not clear why there was the discrepancy.
At least one US warship late Friday pounded the area, which is near the port town of Bargal, after the government forces clashed with the militants.
"We have successfully completed the operation against the terrorists who came here and we are chasing the other five," Mohamoud said, speaking from the Puntland capital, Garowe.
He said the total number of militants was 13, but earlier government officials reported there were as many as 35.
Mohamoud said that five of the foreign militants came from Britain, Eritrea, Sweden, the US and Yemen. He said security forces identified them from their passports.
The remaining three could not be immediately identified, Mohamoud said.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declined to comment yesterday about Friday's reported US naval strike on targets in Somalia, saying it was possibly an ongoing operation.
"I think that's possibly an ongoing operation and I'm not going to talk about it," Gates told a news briefing on the sidelines of an Asian security conference.
The Somali government declared victory against Islamic insurgents in the capital, which is in the south, in April. But since then officials of the government and Ethiopian troops sent to prop up it have been targeted in bomb attacks.
"The insurgency appears to be spreading to other parts of Somalia, which raises a fundamental problem for the TFG [transitional federal government]. In addition, the military tactics being used by the insurgents, including the use of suicide bombings, raises a very serious question about the prospects for long-term stability in Somalia and the region," said Ted Dagne, a specialist in African Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the US Congress.
A task force of coalition ships is permanently based in the northern Indian Ocean.
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