Just heard it on Fox, which noted “casualties on the ground,” but didn’t specify beyond that.

Story here:

A U.S. helicopter gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al-Qaida operatives in southern Somalia, but it was not known whether the mission was successful, CBS News reported on Monday.

The U.S. Air Force helicopter, operated by the Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia, where the al-Qaida suspects were believed to have fled from the capital, Mogadishu, the network reported.

A Pentagon spokesman said he had no information on the report.

Possibly a “major blow?”

The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Martin reports. Those terror attacks killed more than 200 people…

The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia, Martin reports, where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.

Once they started moving, the al Qaeda operatives became easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command.

If the attack got the operatives it was aimed at, reports Martin, it would deal a major blow to al Qaeda in East Africa.

The perps of the embassy attacks, huh?

Flashback to Nairobi, Kenya, Aug 7, 1998:

U.S. Embassy, Nairobi, Kenya

When: August 7, 1998; 10:30 a.m. local time.

Explosive Device: A truck bomb, detonated in the embassy’s rear parking entrance.

Death Toll: 12 American diplomats, around 200 Kenyan citizens.

Injuries: 10 Americans, 12 foreign service nationals seriously injured; 4,000 Kenyans injured.

Here is an old CNN profile piece on all the Americans killed in Kenya.
Father and son Julian and Jay Bartley were among them:

Consul General Julian Bartley, 55, of Jacksonville, Florida, had three decades of government service in several countries and was working toward an ambassadorship.

Bartley’s 20-year-old son, Jay, hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps, but instead died at his side. The university student had taken a summer job at the embassy.

Flashback to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1998 (emphasis mine):

John Lange, then the U.S. charge d’affaires in Tanzania, said he was having a meeting in his third-floor office that Friday morning, preparing for the arrival of the new ambassador.

Lange described feeling a deep rumble before an explosion rocked his office, shattering windows. He and the six other embassy workers in the room suffered only superficial injuries.

“I now understand what it’s like when your parachute doesn’t open and your whole life passes before your eyes,” Lange said.

A series of smaller explosions that sounded like gunfire occurred after the main blast, Lange testified. He discovered later they were tires blowing and gas tanks exploding in cars parked outside the embassy.

Lange, the current U.S. ambassador to Botswana, instinctively sought to call the State Department operations center in Washington and managed to find a working telephone on the embassy grounds.

“There’s been a huge explosion, a lot of damage to the building. You won’t be hearing from me for a while,” Lange recalled telling officials.

Justina Mdobilu, an embassy translator, was among the staffers meeting with Lange when the blast occurred.

“I suddenly saw what was like a flash of lightning for a split second and what sounded like a thunderstorm went on for 15 seconds,” Mdobilu said. Pieces of glass were caught in her braided hair, she said, and her arms were cut as she shielded her face from flying glass.

“I thought I was dreaming,” Mdobilu said. “When I looked around me, people were bleeding.”

Mdobilu, then eight months pregnant, eventually climbed over cement blocks to get out outside and used a ladder to scale an embassy wall to safety.

Elizabeth Slater, a State Department information officer, began work at the embassy two days before the bombing. She wept on the stand recalling the blast and its aftermath.

“It went pitch black.” Slater said, describing an oily, gritty feel to the air when a wall collapsed on her and a colleague. After rubble and a bookcase was pulled off her, Slater made her way out.

“Coming down the stairwell, there were all kinds of body parts,” Slater said. She told of finding a disoriented colleague who wouldn’t leave without her shoes, so Slater gave the woman her own pair. After she made it outside, Slater said, she saw a security guard near the front post, close to where the bomb-laden truck detonated.

“He didn’t have any skin left,” she said. “I just wished he would hurry up and die.”

Eleven dead at that site, 8 injured.

Allah notes the names you need to be on the watch for, if indeed we hit our targets. Also, classic Clinton emoting remembered.

Update: AC-130s in Somalia? I feel like I heard that somewhere recently.

Update: “Nowhere to run:” Mudville Gazette gets you up to speed on where things stand in Somalia. For Islamists, it’s right in between the U.S. Navy and the Ethiopian butt-kickers.

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