MOGADISHU (REUTERS) - Somalian Islamist militants Al-Shabaab said on Sunday there was "no senior official" present at a house raided by US forces south of the capital on Sunday.
US forces conducted raids in Libya and Somalia on Saturday, two weeks after the attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that was claimed by Al-Shabaab, capturing an Al-Qaeda figure in Tripoli wanted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The raid on Barawe failed to take its target.
"The US claim that a senior Al-Shabaab official was in the house is false. No senior official was in the house," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al-Shabaab's military operation spokesman, told Reuters.
"Normal fighters lived in the house and they bravely counter-attacked and chased the attackers. The apostate Somali government is nothing in Somalia. No one asked them for permission to carry out the attack."