Hundreds of residents of a remote town in southern Somalia staged an anti-American demonstration on Tuesday after the United States launched an air strike against “a known al Qaeda terrorist” there. The town of Dobley was hit by two missiles on Monday in the fourth US strike in 14 months against Somalia, where Washington says local Islamists are sheltering wanted al Qaeda leaders. Demonstrators in Dobley, a small town on the Somali-Kenyan border, chanted anti-American slogans, a local official said. The district commissioner, Ali Hussein Nur, said the protesters were angry at the US attack. “Since the American government admitted bombing our town, where people and livestock were killed and properties damaged, it must pay compensation,” Nur told Reuters by telephone.
The exact toll from Monday’s attack was unclear. Nur said on Monday that six people were killed, but a local politician said only three were wounded. Residents of Dobley said they believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said on Monday the attack was against “a known al Qaeda terrorist”. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters the United States would pursue al Qaeda operatives wherever it found them. “They are plotting and planning all over the world to destabilise the world, to inflict terror, and where we find them, we are going to go after them,” he said on Monday. In Mogadishu, two of the Somali capital’s independent FM radios, Shabelle and Horn Afrik, were back on air after security forces raided their premises, their directors said.