The United States on Tuesday launched air-strikes on targets in Somalia that it said were hiding Al Qaeda suspects.
An American AC-130 gunship opened fire on Hayo village, near Somalia's border with Kenya late on Monday. This is the first direct US military intervention in the African country since 1994.
Sources said 'a large number of Islamic extremists' were killed in the bombing.
Reports said that the US military has sent an aircraft carrier to join three other US warships to conduct anti-terror operations off the Somali coast.
The main target of the attacks is believed to be Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 attacks on the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which claimed 225 lives.
This is the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since the 1990s. However, US officials are tight-lipped and have not yet confirmed the air-strikes.
Defending the air-strikes, President Abdullahi Yusuf told media persons in capital Mogadishu, that the US had a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Yusuf had on Monday entered the restive capital for the first time since his election.
