The US military remained silent on a press report Friday that US ground troops used Ethiopian bases to fight Al-Qaeda in Somalia, but said it would help regional allies fight terrorists.
"We work very closely with our allies in the region in the conduct of our military operations," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said after the New York Times reported Friday that the US military attacked leaders of the Al-Qaeda network in Somalia last month from bases in Ethiopia.
US and Ethiopian officials also shared intelligence on the location of the Al-Qaeda members, with US officials even supplying satellite pictures, the Times reported, citing unnamed US officials.
"We are committed to pursuing terrorist activities and their operations where they are taking place. We are going to work with our allies in the region to seek out, identify, locate, capture and if necessary kill terrorists and those who provide them safe haven," he said.
According to the newspaper, the US military launched air strikes on the Al-Qaeda suspects from an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia. A secret US commando team also entered Somalia after being deployed to bases in Ethiopia and Kenya.
In January, US forces deployed heavily armed AC-130 gunship airplanes to carry out at least two air strikes in southern Somalia against suspected Al-Qaeda members.
The officials told the paper their effort had been a qualified success, disrupting terrorist networks in Somalia but failing to kill three Al-Qaeda operatives blamed for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Somalia has been the scene of a long cycle of violence since the toppling of dictator Mohamad Siad Barre in 1991.
In December, Ethiopian troops entered Somalia to help the weak transitional government drive out hard-line Islamists forces.
The Islamists had been running the capital Mogadishu for the previous six months and controlling large parts of the country, with the government confined to a provincial backwater.
