Conflicting reports about US air strikes in Somalia

There are conflicting reports emerging after the US military bombed a coastal town in northern Somalia's Puntland region on June 1. Both US and Somali officials have claimed that the strikes targeted a group of armed men who arrived in Bargal town by speedboats last week, sparking a gunfight with lightly-armed local police. According to the officials, the men included Somalis and foreign-born fighters from various countries, and number somewhere between 35 and 70 men. CNN reported that suspected al-Qaida militants believed to be responsible for the 1998 terror attacks on US embassies in east Africa were the primary targets of the air strikes. Hassan Dahir Afqura, the vice president of Puntland, told local media the next day in the regional capital Garowe that eight suspected militants were killed in the air strike. According to Afqura, five Puntland intelligence (PIS) agents were wounded during a gunfight with the militants. The Puntland vice president said the armed men came by boat from southern Somalia and included members of the Islamic Courts movement, a group that ruled south Somalia last year before being militarily ousted by US-backed Ethiopian troops. Afqura said Puntland security forces had recovered US, Swedish and British passports among others from the dead men. The vice president did not produce any evidence to that effect, however. But Bargal locals said that the US air strikes missed their target, and instead wounded four PIS agents. Describing the beginning of events, one local elder said 13 armed men led by a man from Puntland landed at the coast on May 30. The group's leader apparently told the locals that his men, who clearly included foreigners, came to Bargal for fishing. But local policemen attacked the 13 men, who defended themselves and fled into nearby mountains. "No one knows who they [really] were or where they went," the elder said. Local police then contacted PIS agents in the port city of Bossaso, Puntland's commercial hub. Security forces were dispatched to the area and US warships operating off Somali coast alerted, security sources said. Afqura said three US intelligence agents were on location to help with the hunt for the militants. The Puntland administration in northeastern Somalia declared itself a semi-autonomous regional entity in 1998 and has enjoyed relative stability ever since.