WASHINGTON: The US military used bases inside Ethiopia last month in a quiet campaign to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders in the Horn of Africa, The New York Times reported on its web site on Thursday, citing US officials.
The Times said the campaign included the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to conduct air strikes against Islamic militants in neighbouring Somalia.
Officials were quoted as saying the clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant information-sharing on the militants' positions and information from US spy satellites with the Ethiopian military, the newspaper reported.
Members of a secret US special operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya and ventured into Somalia, the officials added.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss details of the operation with the Times, but the paper said some officials agreed to provide specifics because they considered it an relative success story. They said the campaign disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia and led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants.
The mission was in support of Ethiopian troops' recent drive to enter Somalia to help the government oust the militant Islamist movement.
According to the Times, Washington resisted an official endorsement of the Ethiopian invasion, but US officials from several agencies said the Bush administration decided last year an incursion was the best way to remove the Islamists from power.
The dead and captured does not yet include some al Qaeda leaders such as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on the Kenya and Tanzania embassies in 1998.
The sharing of battlefield intelligence on the Islamists' positions was a result of an Ethiopian request to General John Abizaid, then the commander of the US Central Command. John Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, also authorized spy satellites to be diverted to provide information to Ethiopia, officials told the Times.
The secret operation in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach the Pentagon has taken to send Special Operations troops to hunt high-level terrorism suspects. President George W Bush gave the Pentagon powers after the September 11 attacks to carry out such missions, the report said.
The newspaper said that Ethiopian troops have received US training for counterterrorism operations for several years in camps near the Somalia border.
No comments:
Post a Comment