Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)
Abdinasir Mohamed Guled
19 June 2008
Residents in Bardhere town south of Somalia have expressed panic over unidentified plane thought detective military jet overflew Bardhere town several hours on Wednesday night.
Making like daylight bright flying with low flight the plane has closed on one occasion in the interior of a populated area in the town that created more fear to the residents of town those thought the plane wanted to carry out air strike.
" I couldn't sleep well tonight because the volume of the plane's recoil noise" Abshira Siad resident in Bardhere told Shabelle English service" Allah saved as from harm"
Some residents as well told that they thought that the plane might want to know if the town is Islamist's stronghold.
The commissioner of the town Mohamed Hersi Dhudi described as amazing over the air travel of the unknown plane flewover in the town's air.
US says that The targets in Somalia were suspected Al-Qaeda operatives blamed both for the 1998 US embassy bombings and the 2002 suicide attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port of Mombasa that killed 15 people.
Among the so-called "high value" Al-Qaeda man believed to be in Somalia are Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from the Comoros, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Sudanese national Abu Taha al-Sudani, an arms expert believed to be close to Osama bin Laden.
Others are Sheikh Dahir Aweys, the cleric heading Somalia's Islamic Courts Union following the US killed air strike Aden Hashi eyrow the commander of Alshabab Islamic fighters.
A US force is based in Djibouti and patrols the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden as part of the US-led "war on terror".
US intelligence says Al-Qaeda has stepped up operations in Somalia, a nation of about 10 million people wracked by lawlessness since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Violence has been growing in Somalia since 2006, when neighboring Ethiopia, with support from Washington, launched a military operation inside Somalia to oust an Islamist movement that had seized control of the capital and other cities,
Islamists fighters launch almost-daily attacks on Somali government forces and allied Ethiopian troops. More than a year of fighting has killed thousands of Somalis and displaced hundreds of thousands more, mostly from Mogadishu.
Somalia has long been a focal point of US military intervention, particularly during the 1990s, when a failed attempt to capture a Mogadishu warlord resulted in the "Black Hawk Down" debacle, in which 18 US soldiers were killed by Somalian militias, reported Time magazine.
The UIC ruled much of Somalia in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian forces backed by Somali government troops, who have been struggling to exert their control over the country ever since.
Al-Shabab, the millitary wing of the UIC, did not attend the truce talks between somali Government and the opposition group based in Asmara.
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